















'’^Clarior e tenehris” 






AVALKER, EVANS k COGSAVELL, PRINTERS, CHARI.ESTON, S* C. 


TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE 


Honorable Robert Woodward Barnwell, 


THIS BOOK IS reverently INSCRIBED. 


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A HERO’S LAST DAYS, 

OR 

NEPENTHE. 


CHAPTER I. 

“I am old and blind ; 

Men point at me as smitten by God’s frown, 
Afflicted and deserted by my kind.” 

[From a Poem on Milton’s Blindness. 

If one to whom there belonged, by birth- 
right, an inheritance of rulership over others 
may, in some sort, be styled a prince, then the 
second of the incongruities described in the say- 
ing “ I have seen servants riding upon liorses, 

I and princes walking as servants on the earth,” 

I was, about the year 1870, as frequently witnessed 
in the Southern States of the Union as the first. 

Upon a certain day in the early part of Sep- 
tember, during that year, such a prince, in the 
person of a fine-looking young man, engaged 
in the humble occupation of waggoning, was 
traversing one of the loneliest of the mountain 
roads of western North Carolina. 


G 


A Herd’s Last Days, 

This road had formerly been a considerable 
thoroughfare. It had been originally cut for 
the convenience of the families of gentlemen — 
most of whom were from the low-country of 
South Carolina — who were in the habit of 
passing the summers in the neighborhood ; 
but this habit had been generally abandoned, 
and, at the time referred to, the enjoyment of 
the scenery was almost monopolized by John 
Langdon, the gentleman just introduced to 
the reader. He frequently had occasion to 
carry his “ team ” over that portion of the road 
which lay between his home in the Sechoolah j 

valley and the mountain town of A , whence ; 

all the necessaries of life, except those derived 
from a small farm, had to be procured. It was, 
therefore, with an interest attached to an un- : 
usual circumstance that he this day remarked, 
here and there, the fresh footprints of some one, 1 
the size and shape of whose boot argued him f 
no common mountaineer. It crossed his mind ♦ 
that the unknown might prove to be an ac- | 
quaintance ; for it appeared more likel}^ that 
one of the old frequenters of the neighborhood '[ 
— all of whom he had known well — should re- I 
turn to look after an abandoned home, than I 
that a stranger should take it into his head to 1 
visit an out-of-the-way valley. Accordingly, I 


7 


Or Nepenthe. 

lie was desirous of overtaking the pedestrian, 
and, about the middle of the day, it appeared 
that his desire was to be gratified ; for he 
caught sight of a gray-suited figure, standing 
out against the sky, on a height in front of him. 
Whoever he might be, this person evidently 
perceived the waggon at the same moment, and, 
to judge by his immediately seating himself 
upon a rock, determined to wait for it. 

Something in the attitude suggested weari- 
ness, and the outline of the figure struck 
Langdon as familiar. He sprang into the 
waggon, by the side of which he had been walk- 
ing, and, gathering up the reins, which had 
been fastened to the seat, began to urge his 
mules forward, as if to a wished-for meeting. 
His shouts, as he approached nearer, were 
answered rather faintly, and he only became 
certain of the identity of the traveller when he 
was close enough to recognize his features ; 
but they were deadly pale. 

“ Good heavens ! Godwyn ! ” he exclaimed. 

“ So it is you, Johnny ! ” was the answer. 
“ Don’t be alarmed? I have had a- chill ; but 
it will pass off directly.” And, indeed, after he 
had been revived by the contents of a flask, 
produced from the waggon, the speaker re- 
covered a more natural appearance, though a 


8 


A Hero’s Last Days^ 


f 


painful change, since the time when they had 
last been together, was still apparent to John * 
Langdon ; yet his immediate anxiety about ^ 
his friend’s condition was partially relieved 1 
his account of himself. 

“I have only lately recovered from a severe f 
illness,” said he, “ and have been recruiting ’ 
myself with a walking tour. I took this route, 
remembering your old description of the 
beauties of the Sechoolah valley, and with 
some vague hopes of meeting you. Last night 
I heard that your father was still living in , 
the neighborhood, and the thought of seeing 
him, if not you, made me come on to-day, 
when I ought, perhaps, to have rested. About • 
an hour ago I felt this wretched chill creeping 
on me, and, I can tell you, was thankful enough 
to catch sight of this waggon just now, little as ' 
I dreamed you were in it. I was beginning to 
fear I could not hold out as far as Byrom’s, the .1 
place I was told I could stop at. How far isvj 
that now?” ^ 

A mile or two ; but you are not to stop ■ ! 
there. What you have to<lo now, is to let me i 
help you at once into the waggon, for I don’t 
believe you can manage to get in by yourself .” '] 

So saying, Langdon, after hastily making: 
things as comfortable as the nature of the casef 


Or Nepenthe. 


9 


permitted, by putting a box or two out of the 
way, and spreading a huge great-coat over 
an arrangement of bags and parcels, for his 
friend to lie on, gave him the offered assistance, 
which turned out, in spite of Godwyn’s protest, 
to be very necessary. He next placed his 
friend’s satchel under his head, by way of a 
pillow, and disposed the wagon cover in such a 
fashion as to give him both air and shade. 

“Jump in too then, if you will,” he said to' 
a beautiful setter, which was Godwyn’s com- 
panion, and appeared unwilling to be separated 
from him at this crisis. “ And now,” added 
Langdon, addressing his friend, “ just imagine 
that this is an ambulance, and that I am taking 
you to be nursed by a nice family in Virginia, 
with lots of pretty girls in it, as I did once be- 
fore — you remember ? ” 

“ Where are you really going to take me ?” 

“ Home, of course. You surely did not sup- 
pose I would let you pass us by ? Have you 
forgotten we are cousins ?” said Langdon, think- 
ing to himself. “ It was silly, my making that 
allusion to pretty girls, yet he can’t be so ridic- 
ulous as to suppose it meant anything, though 
tliey are pretty, especially ” 

“ The people I stopped with last night thouglit 
your father was living all the year round at 


10 


A Hero’s Lad Days, 


his old summer place,” said Godwyn, inter- 
rupting this train of thought. 

“ So he is. I farm it. You have heard, I 
dare say, of his having lost his eye-sight during 
the last few years ?” Godwyn nodded assent. 

“ He has also fallen into poor health,” Langdon 
went on. The rest of the family, after my 
two brothers were killed, you know, were all 
girls except myself.” 

“ One of your sisters was married to your 
cousin, Major Langdon, was she not?” 

“Yes. He was killed at second Manassas. 
She is living with us. Another married Arthur 
Creighton — you remember him? — a doctor, 
a red-headed follow. She lives in the low- 
country. But there are three more still, and, 
of course, I have had to manage for them all ; 
which is very different from managing them, 
by the way,” and Langdon smiled as he added, 

“ the fact is, they all have me rather under 
hack than otherwise, you know the way of 
girls?” 

“ I know very little of womankind,” said 
Godwyn, “ except my mother, and I fancy she 
was unlike other women.” 

“ Bather, I should hope,” thought Langdon 
to himself. He had seen the lady in question, , 
who was a distant relative, once or twice, and' 

I 

i 


Or Nepenthe. 


11 


remembered a stern, awe-inspiring countenance 
and manner, which he, then a boyish under- 
graduate, had not regarded witli admiration. 

He had the grace to ^eel ashamed of his re- 
flection, and tried to put on a proper look of 
sympathy, when Godwyn added presently, “She 
died last winter.” 

“ I — we never heard of it,” was all Langdon 
could think of saying, hoping no more was 
necessary. He then suggested that his friend 
should now try to “ sleep off the chill.” 

Godwyn assented. It appeared that his at- 
tack had taken a favorable turn ; for he pres- 
ently fell into a slumber so profound as not to 
be disturbed by such occasional jolts of the 
wagon as the utmost skill on the paid of its 
driver could not prevent. 

Now it is one of the doctrines of the mys- 
tics — with whose philosophy Alfred Godwyn 
was, at one time, much taken — that men pass 
through a series of spiritual deaths before they 
actually die. If this is true, it may not be un- 
natural to suppose that the outward man, in 
highly sensitive organisms, may, in some way, 
reflect such crises in the inner life. Since, too, 
the period of his thus meeting with his friend 
was destined to form a turning-point in this 
young man’s existence, and, from the sleep into 


12 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


which he had fallen, he was to wake to an en- . 
tirely new set of personal interests, so that, 
during the three hours which it lasted, he 
might be said to have died to the past, and to 
his former self, if ever in his life he actually 
underwent one of those mystical deaths, he did 
so at this time. But, however it may be ex- 
plained, certain it is that his body now, for a 
little while, seemed very strangely to put on, as 
it were, the figure of death — far more than is 
the case during an ordinary sleep. 

His countenance was of a highly intellectual . 
cast ; its habitual expression was that of intense 
thoughtfulness, as if he were seeking after the 
clue to some problem. There now dawned 
upon it a look, as of satisfied repose in the 
attainment of that after which it had striven — 
a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the “ first, last 
look,” one day to rest upon it. John Langdon 
was neither an imaginative person nor a deep 
observer ; but, Godwyn’s countenance and fig- 
ure being visible to him over the side of the 
waggon, he was struck with a sort of awe by the' 
strangeness of his appearance and its still grand- ' 
eur. Once, half impatient with himself for 
such fancifulness, he even stopped the course^ 
of his mules that he might assure himself that* 
his friend was actually alive, bv feeling his"* 

I 


Or Nepenthe. 


13 


i pulse. It was so feeble — a peculiarity of his 
late illness, Godwyii afterwards explained, was 
that, at times, it was almost imperceptible — that 
it took some little while for Langdon to satisfy 
himself that it was actually beating; but it 
then began to go on regularly and more 
strongly. Langdon, convinced that it was only 
his own “ nervousness ” that had affected his 
judgment at first, felt half provoked both with 
himself, for having indulged such fears, and 
with Godwyn, who continued to sleep pro- 
foundly, for having unconsciously awakened 
^them. 

“ However,” thought he, as it were excusing 
i himself to himself, “ there can be no doubt, he 
looks awfully. I believe he is six months 
younger than I am and that makes hinT^let me 
; see — nearly twenty-seven ; yet any one would 
take him for forty.” 

In this he was mistaken ; a discriminating 
observer would have seen that Godwyn’s attenu- 
ation, and the thinness of his close-cut hair, 
■ were signs of illness, not of age. 

; Langdon did not fail to note the whiteness 
of his wrists, and the way the gloves hung on 
i his small hands; he made up his mind that 
;his friend had never betaken himself to such 
[manual labors as had fallen to his own share. 


14 A Hero’s Last Days, ■ 

“ It is almost a pity he did not. No doubt it 
was some kind of brain-work that brought him 
to this,” was his conclusion. “ He was just the 
sort of fellow to kill himself in that way, if he 
had half a chance. I declare, he looks more 
like Shakespeare’s bust than he ever did.” 

Now “ Shakespeare,” from some fancied re- 
semblance, had been Godwyn’s soubriquet in 
the college course, where the acquaintance of 
these two had begun, of which this may be an 
appropriate place to give some account. 

Their student life had been interrupted in 
1861 by the outbreak of the war ; for young 
men of their stamp naturally furnished the 
earliest class of volunteers in the Confederate 
service, in which the cavalry was their favorite 
branch. These two had — each with the rank 
of lieutenant — entered a regiment which was ' 
commanded by the father of Langdon, a gen- . 
tleman who had long been prominent among 
South Carolina secessionists, and who after- 
wards acquired some military distinction, once . 
declining a generalship. 

Godwyn was only in active service one year. 
He was wounded in the first general engage- i 
ment in which his regiment took part, by af- 
shot in the jaw-bone, which was the cause of a j 
defect in his utterance ever after, besides slightly! 


Or Nepenthe. 


15 


affecting the s^nnmetry of his face. While re- 
covering from this wound, in the house of the 
Virginia family to which his friend had al- 
luded — for a wonder, considering the locality, 
his joke had had no foundation in fact, since 
there were no pretty girls in it — Godwyn was 
taken prisoner. He spent the rest of the years 
of the war in Fort Johnson, where John Lang- 
don afterwards joined him for a time. Before 
that period, though cousins, they had not been 
specially intimate ; but thirteen months incar- 
ceration together made them close friends. 
Finally Langdon, after a severe illness, during 
which Godwyn had also been in the hospital 
I and allowed to assist in nursing him, was ex- 
j changed, along with a batch of prisoners, sup- 
i posed to be disabled for life. When they parted, 

: it was with a mutual feeling that they would 
always feel to each other as brothers ; but cor- 
I respondence had been difficult — at first almost 
impossible; and they had drifted almost en- 
' tirely out of each other’s knowledge until now. 

; When Godwyn awoke at last, declaring him- 
j self much better, he gave his friend some ac- 
1 count of his life since they had parted. On 
; his return from prison he had found his mother 
j — his only near relative — living as a refugee in 
I a small up-country village of South Carolina, 

i 


IG A Herd’s Last Days. 

where he had been keeping a school ever since 
until her death, which had occurred nearly a 
year before. He had had a severe attack of 
fever, the previous summer, like that from 
which he had lately recovered ; had given up 
school-keeping at that time, and had spent 
the winter before at the North, where lie had, 
as Langdon knew, connections through his 
father, who had been a Marylander. He told 
him that he had inherited a small prop- 
erty from one of these, though hardly enough 
to live upon, and that it w^as his intention to 
look out, wdien well enough to work, for “ some- 
thing he was fit for ” — explaining that to mean 
some kind of literary w^ork ; he had occasion- 
ally, he stated, Qontributed to new^spapers and 
magazines, though it had not been a very prof- 
itable employment. 

“ The fact is,” said he, “ I represent the mi- 
nority, the apparently weak side — in point of 
numerical support — on almost every subject on 
wdiich it is possible to hold tw^o opinions, and . 
I still advocate the views wdiich even our owui 
people have decided ' don’t pay,’ and wdiich 
certainly do not pay, as far as money is con- 
cerned.” 

John Langdon w^as no visionary ; he wais ; 
about to say : 1 


Or Nepenthe. 


17 


“ Why on earth not try your hand at some 
sort of work that does pay?” when, catching 
sight of the pale features, on which shone the 
light of an unconquered, unconquerable spirit, 
he was not so dull of soul as not to respond to 
it after his fashion. 

“ Well, old fellow, I believe you are bound to 
succeed in the end, at whatever you really set 
yourself!” was what he said. 

“Succeed! What is success, Johnny? To 
accomplish what ^mu undertake, or to have it 
acknowledged that you have done so ? I try 
never to think about anything but whether I 
j have the right on my side. I believe in the 
I final recognition and triumph of Truth, though 
! it may not be given me to share in it ; mean- 
f while I have nailed her colors to my little 
i mast, to float till it goes down.” 

“ But who can bo certain ? Suppose they 
! turned out not to be her colors.” 

I “ If ever I find that out, I will tear them 
j down ; till then, one must go by the light he has.” 

“ But meanwhile one must make enoiigdi to 
I live.” 

I “ I know it ; indeed I am not altogether a 
I fool, Johnny ; all tlie same I mean to let the 
I bread and butter question rest until my head 
I is stronger to decide what I shall do.” 


18 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


‘‘ Well ; I am glad I fell in with yon as I did,” 
Langdon said. The thing yon have to do at 
present is to stay quietly with us till you are 
your own man again, and let me return a little 
of the nursing you gave me at Fort Johnson.” 

“Are 3^ou sure I shall not be in the way?” 

“ Look here : I will tell you exactly how 
things are with us, so that you need not be 
afraid. The house was built before the war — 
luckily for us now, it Avas a sort of hobby of 
my father’s, who saw to everything about it 
himself — the seasoning of every bit of timber, 
and all arrangements. Of course they are in 
a style far beyond our present means, in most 
respects ; and as for beds and that sort of thing, 
we have more than we can use. We have 
precious little money now-a-da^^s coming in 
from what remains of our property below, — my 
father’s plantation on the sea islands was con- 
fiscated, you know ; still, I get from A all 

that is really necessary, which the farm, the 
woods and the river cannot supply, and, on the 
whole, we are wonderfully comfortable. My 
sister from the low-country paid us a visit, last 
year, and she says we live luxuriously, com- 
pared with the people who have gone back 
there. We are as lonely, almost, as the Swiss 
Family Robinson, and the chief objection to 


Or Nepenthe. 


19 


our going on living as we do is, that it is a 
pity for the girls to be cut off, as they are, from 
all society, — even the little boys are getting old 
enough for it to be a disadvantage to them.’’ 

“ I thought you said there were no boys.” 

“ Oh ! they are my nephews, my eldest sis- 
ter’s children. I have been conducting their 
education on the old Persian plan, so far, — the 
riding being on mules instead of horses ; and 
for a pair of seven-year-olds, I think they do 
me credit. Now my father is taking them in 
hand, to ding the declensions into their heads. 
It is well he does not dislike that occupation 
as much as I should. The fact is, his blindness 
cuts him off from almost everything else that 
he would feel to be of use, and it is an excellent 
thing for him. If it were only on his account, 
Godwyn — giving him a fresh person to talk 
wdth, about the things he is most interested in, 
we should all be particularly glad of a visit 
from you. ” 

“ Thank you ; I shall be glad of an oppor- 
tunity of knowing him better,” said Godwyn, 
relieved from fears of finding himself de trop 
in a scene of poverty, and beginning to enter- 
tain pleasurable anticipations of what was be- 
fore him. 

“ We are just now entering the Sechoolah 


20 


4 Hero\s Last Bays, 


valley,” said Laiigdou, soon after. “ That ” — 
and he indicated a picturesque little building, 
only half visible from the road — “ is a chapel 
built by my father and his friends before the 
war; but no service has been held in it for 
several years.” 

“ Do none of them live here now, then ? ” 

“No; the rest of the broken-down aristocracy 
have absquatulated from these parts. We got 
stranded, as it Avere.” 

Two or three other buildings presently be- 
came visible. The houses Avere of unpainted 
wood ; but from tlieir size, numerous out-build- 
ings, and other evidences of luxurious usages, 
had seemingly been built for Avealthy persons, 
though noAV Avearing a look of forlorn deser- 
tion. 

As the Avagon entered a pass where two pre- 
cipitous banks only allowed enough space for 
a small stream to floAV, which had, evidently, 
once been turned aside, but had noAv resumed 
its former bed, tlius become the road, John 
Langdon got into the wagon, remarking that, 
though it was not visible, they Avere noAv Avithin 
a hundred Awards of liis home, and yet the 
waggon Avould have to go nearly a third of a 
mile still, to reach it by the road. 

“ I ahvays give warning from this point that 


21 


Or Nepenthe. 

I am coming,” said he, taking a bugle from 
under the seat ; “ there is a fine echo here.” 

With that he blew a long blast, and then 
struck into a gay reveille, an old Confederate 
cavalry call, perfectly familiar to Godwyn, 
which was caught up and repeated over and 
over by the spirit-voices of the woods. Godwyn 
felt the gaiety of the air as a sort of mockery 
of sad associations ; nor was his the only ear 
upon which the sounds fell jarringly. Lang- 
don’s father, the blind ex -colonel, caught them, 
as he sat by an open window in his house, 
where one of his daughters was reading to him. 
For one moment he gave an eager start ; tlien 
a grave expression settled on his countenance ; 
he fell into a deep revery, but was roused by 
the inquiry: “Shall I go on, papa? You know 
it will be some time still before Johnny gets 
here.” 

“Yes, little daughter,” he said. 

Slie whom he addressed was a stately young 
woman; but it had never seemed to occur to 
liim that she had altered, in character or ap- 
pearance, since he had last beheld her, nearly 
five years before. He treated her, in almost 
every respect, as still a child. Slie never 
dreamed of resenting tiiis ; but being his es- 
tablished reader, and living in complete in- 


22 


A llero^H Last Days, 


timacy with his habits of thouglit, she simply 
accepted liis views on this, as she did on all 
other subjects, — so much so, indeed, as to find it 
difficult to cheer him when he fell, as now, 
into fits of depression. She regretted her offer 
to read on ; for, as it happened, she came to a 
passage of strange applicabilit}" to the train of 
painful thought which the notes of the reveille 
had awakened ; yet, knowing the likelihood of 
his being acquainted with the context, she did 
not venture to skip the majestic lines : 


“ God of our fatliers ! what is man, 

Tlr-U Thou to him, with hand so various, 

Or might Tsay contrarious, 

Tem}3erest thy providence through his short course, 

Not evenly, as Thou rul’st 

The angelic orders and inferior creatures, mute, 

Irrational and brute. 

Nor do I name of common men the rout 
That, wandering loose about. 

Grow up and perish as the summer fly ; 

Heads without name, no more remembered, 

But such as Thou hast solemnly adorned 

To some great work, Thy glory 

And people’s safety, which, in part, they effect. 

Yet towards these, thus dignified. Thou oft. 

Amidst their height of morn, 

ChangestThy countenance and Thy hand with no regard 
To highest favoi-s past 

Trom Thee to them, or them to Thee of service. 


(Jr Nepenf/ie. 


23 


Xor only dost degrade them, or remit 
To life obscured, which were a fair dismission, 

But tlirow’st them lower than Thou did’st exalt them 
high, 

Unseemly falls, in human eye, 

Too grievous for the trespass or omission ! 

Oft leav’st them to the hostile sword 
Of heathen and profane, their carcasses 
To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived, 

Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times, 

And condemnation of the ungrateful multitude. 

If these they have ’scaped, perhaps in poverty, 

With sickness and disease Thou bow’st them down. 
Painful diseases and deformed, 

In crude old age. 

Though not disordinate, yet causeless suffering, 

The punishment of dissolute days ; in fine. 

Just or unjust alike seem miserable. 

For oft alike both come to evil end.” 

“ The thing which is, is that which has 
already been!’’ said the blind man. “Yet,” 
he added, raising his head, and speaking with 
emphasis, “ let us not take Milton for our 
prophet altogether ! How partial were the in- 
terpretations of providence of even his sublime 
mind, and how full of that presumption which 
was the error of his religious as well as his 
political creed ! Wliat are we, to dare to judge 
of such matters ? ” 


24 


A Herd’s Last Bays, 


CHAPTER 11. 

“ Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed 
With the clear-pointed tlaine of chastity, 

Clear without heat, undying, tended by 
Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane 
Of her still spirit ; locks not wide-dispersed, 
Madonna-wise on either side her head ; 

Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign 
The suininer calm of golden charity. 

Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood, 

Revered Isabel, the crown and head. 

The stately flower of female fortitude ” 

[Tennyson. 

Tlie echoes of the horn had not 3"et died 
away when Godwyn perceived two little yel- 
low-haired lads, exceedingly alike, and ap- 
parently about seven years old, climbing with 
what looked to an unaccnstomcd eye, danger- 
ous rapidity, down one of the precipices at the 
side of the road. 

“ My little nephews,” said Langdon. “ I al- 
ways let them ride home postilion-fashion from 
this point when I am coming home from A — .” 

“ They seem in a hnrry. Won’t they come 
to grief?” 

“ Not they — they are as sure-footed as a pair 
of little goats,” observed Langdon, witli evi- 
dent pride in their agility. 


Or Nepenthe. 


25 


The little fellows liung back for a moment 
at the bottom of the declivity, noticing the 
presence of a stranger, but at their uncle’s bid- 
ding, approached through the stream, not be- 
ing encumbered with shoes — as it is indeed 
unusual for hoys of their age to be during the 
summer in the Carolinas — and were intro- 
duced by Langdon as Tom and Ted ; where- 
upon, after reaching up the side of the wagon 
to shake hands, and replying All right ” to 
John Langdon’s enquiries as to how everything 
had gone during his absence, each scrambled, 
without more words, to the back of that mule 
which he regarded as belonging peculiarly to 
himself. 

There come the little girls. They think it 
very hard they are not allowed to climb down 
the banks too,” observed Langdon. “ Look ! 
they have made a note of you, and are dis- 
puting whether to come on or not.” 

The smaller of the two new little personages 
who were to be seen approaching when God- 
wyn’s attention was thus called to them, ap- 
parently took the decision of this discussion 
upon herself, and, after a short pause, came on 
first, bounding along the narrow path with a free, 
agile grace, beautiful to behold ; the other one 
followed more slowly. They were dressed in 


26 


i Hero's Lad Days, 


simple cotton print frocks, and their faces were 
almost hidden by those old-fashioned sun-bon- 
nets, yclept crackers, but the make of these, and 
indeed of all the apparel of both the boys and 
girls, showed in some undefined way, in spite 
of coarse materials, that the little wearers be- 
longed to the gentle class ; indeed this fact was 
unmistakable in the bearing of all four, in 
spite of the awkwardness of the little boys. 

From that defect, the behavior of the little 
ladies was quite free ; their thorough-bred com- 
posure, the slight, courteous bows to the 
stranger, followed by clear-voiced how-do-you- 
dos to their brother, and easy acceptance of 
his little-needed assistance in getting into the 
wagon, were almost amusing*, in the complete 
self-possession they displayed — the more so, as I 
the younger gave the cue to each action, as the 
natural leader. Langdon, whose brotherly in- ' 
stincts Avere half-delighted, half-provoked, at 
this exhibition of precocious ease, did not take 
the same pains as in the case of the boys, and 
left them to introduce themselves to his friend. . 

They speedily divested their heads of the 
sun-bonnets, thereby displaying two most 
charming faces, shaded by the softest of curl- : 
ing locks. The elder one resembled her T 
brother in having squarely formed features, | 


Or Nepenthe. 27 

fair hair and grey eyes, rather sleepy-lookiiig 
in general, but occasionally twinkling with an 
expression of shrewdness. The other had a 
unique, captivating style of beauty ; her hair 
was almost black, yet her complexion might 
have been termed snowy ; deep blue eyes, an 
intellectual brow, and a tender, variable little 
mouth, made up, altogether, the most bewitch- 
j ing countenance, Godwyn thought, he had 
I ever beheld. There was something strangely 
I familar to him in it, too. Suddenly there 
[ flashed across his mind the image of a little 
sister of his own, lost in early childhood, and 
he inwardly accounted to himself for the re- 
semblance by the distant relationship which 
existed between the families. 

The remembrance increased the extraordi- 
nary attraction he felt for the child. He was 
literally tongue-tied by an over-anxiety to 
please, until she took it upon herself to break 
the silence by informing him that it was their 
custom always to “surprise Johnny ” by meet- 
ing him in this way on his return from A . 

Langdon observed that this practice of theirs 
had long ceased to be a “ surprise ” to him or, 
he believed, to the mules either, and he doubted 
if it had ever been an agreeable one to those 
animals. 


28 


1 Hero’s Last Days, 


“ Then they are horrid creatures, and very 
ungrateful ; for we are always giving them 
apples,” said she, with the air of a small 
princess, and she changed the subject by asking 
the name of Godwyn’s dog, at the same time 
making fearless advances towards acquaintance 
Avith that graceful creature by patting its head. 

Upon GodAvyn’s answering that it AA^as called 
“Belphoehe,” she remarked that that Avas Avhat 
papa called Isabel sometimes, and sometimes 
he called Amy — and she indicated her sister — 

“ Amoret but she AA^as of opinion that Una, 
Avdiich AA^as her OAvn real name, and not a nick- 
name at all, AA^as the nicest of all the ladies in 
the “ Faery Queen.” 

‘‘ Come, Una, you had better not pretend to 
have read it all,” said her brother, Avhile God- 
AA^yn AA^as smiling at the little sprite’s cleverness 
in thus acquainting him Avith their names, 
since Johnny had not done so. 

She has read a good deal of it to papa,” ob- 
served her sister, as if in defence. 

“ So neither of you is the one called Isabel ?” 
said GodAA^yn, adding, as he looked at Langdon, 

“ I remember your mentioning that one of your 
little sisters very often, AAdien Ave Avere in prison.” 

While Langdon Avas muttering something ' 
about daring to say he Avas rather “ spoony ”1 


Or Nepenthe. 


29 


about his homesickness at that time, Una ex- 
claimed : “ Oh ! but you can’t call her by her 
name ; she is ever so old,” 

“ Isabel is not really so old,” put in Amy, 
repressively. 

‘‘ She is nearly nineteen ; T heard her say so 
myself,” persisted the child ; “ and I have no 
doubt she is the one Johnny talked about, for 
he likes her ever so much better than he does 
A^irginia, or ever Annie; I believe it is because 
she is the prettiest of all.” 

“You seem determined ta let Godwyn into 
the family secrets,” said her brother ; “ you had 
better tell him now that you think you look 
exactly like her.” 

“ Una knows very well she doesn’t ; no one 
can,” observed Amy in the most decided man- 
ner, as if the mere suggestion of the resem- 
blance would be hurtful to Una; Godwyn in- 
stantly concluded that it was very strong and 
was inspired with curiosity to see this recog- 
nized family beauty and with a conviction of his 
probable fate, in case she really was another 
specimen of the lovely type, which had already 
such peculiar and tender hold upon his heart. 

“ Is this the Mr. Godwyn then, who used to 
be with you in prison, Johnny?” cried the little 
witch, Uhia, suddenly turning the subject; 


30 


A Hero's Lad Days, 


“ then we must be cousins, and I dare say 
Isabel won’t mind about his calling her Miss 
Langdon. And what shall we call you ?” — 
with a killing glance. 

“ Alfred, if you please,” said he, completely 
subjugated. 

During the remainder of the way the two 
kept up a promising small flirtation ; but the 
conversation was not monopolized by them, for 
the tongues of the little boys became unloosed, 
as it occurred to them to relate to their uncle 
an encounter of theirs with a large snake, the 
day before. A certain “Jake” — apparently a 
farm hand — had indeed assisted in the killing 
of it, but had playOd, according to their ac- ■ 
count, a very secondary part to themselves, j 
After that subject had been exhausted, others j 
suggested themselves, and a chorus of small j 
communications and appeals was kept up the i 
rest of the way, which was accomplished rather ! 
slowly, for it was up-hill work ; the mules were i 
no longer fresh, and their master, perceiving i 
Godwyn’s amused interest in the children’s^' 
talk, was at no pains to hasten their course. ] 

They passed througli a large gate into ex-| 
tensive ornamental grounds, evidently little i 
attended to now, but still beautiful^ from theJ 
variety of shrubbery they contained. xVtj 


Or Nepenthe. 


31 


length they reached the front of a large wooden 
house, which bore some resemblance to the toy 
models of Swiss cottages. Waiting in the 
steep-roofed porch, attended by an old negro 
I man, stood a lady, easily to be identified as the 
mother of the little bo3^s. The young widow’s 
countenance also bore a resemblance to that of 
her brother and to the elder of the little girls; 
it was expressive of a nature in repose, per- 
haps naturally lacking in variety. She showed 
i no surprise at Godwyn’s presence, though she 
I could not have been aware, until she saw him, 
* tliat any one was with her brother. 

“ Annie, this is Alfred Godw}m,” he said. 

“ Who was so good to ^mu in prison? We 
shall be glad to have an opportunity of know- 
ing you better,” she said, turning cordially to- 
j wards Godwyn. 

She shook hands with him on his alighting, 

' without further explanations. It was easy to 
see where the little sisters had caught their ease 
of manner. 

‘‘ I shall have to go round to the back door 
to unload,” said Langdon. “ Suppose you take 
Godwyn into the house,” then, addressing the 
servant, “ I say, let him have something to eat 
at once, Scipio. He must be exhausted. He 
has been ill latel}^” 


32 


A Hero's Last Days, 

“ Certainly, Mas Johnny, directly,” answered 
the old man, evidently an old family servant. 

“ Shall I take him right to your room, sah?” 

“Yes; that will be best, until another can 
be got ready for him.” 

The old man, aecordingly, was given God- 
wyids bag, and preceded him into a large, fur- 
nished hall, evidently used as a dining-room, 
the most noticeable peculiarity of which was 
that, instead of being ceiled, it was opened, 
through two stories, up to the top of the house, 
and lighted, except for one stained glass win- 
dow over the door by which they had entered, 
from a cupola. Anotlier feature was a small 
gallery, supported on pillars set about four feet 
from the wall, around three sides of the hall; 
it Avas entered by a Avinding stair on one corner, 
and formed the means of communication be- 
tAveen the upper and loAver stories of the house. 
There Avas an enormous fire-place, decorated 
Avith tiles, and a fine picture of tAvo stags OA^er 
it. 

It appeared that all the rooms in the house 
must open into this hall, either directly or 
through the gallery. 

The old man AA^as inclined to be garrulous; 
evidently Avishing to keep up the credit of the 
family he observed, as he ushered GodAvyn into 


Or Nepenthe. 


33 


one on the ground floor, that “ Massa was 
’bliged to have a room with no stairs, now, and 
Mas Johnny one next him, so they had given 
t up the hall which used to be for billiards to be 
a dining-room.” He went on to inform him 
i that he knew quite well who he was, having 
known his mother, whom he correctly named 
i as Miss Henrietta, before her marriage. A 
, recollection of “Mas Johnny’s” order, that his 
I guest should have something to eat, cut short 
his gossip. 

Godwyn’s bag was too small for him to be 
able to make much change in his toilet, which 
! did not, consequently, detain him long. Re- 
< turning to the hall within ten minutes, at the 
knock of the old man upon his door, he was 
j surprised to And a delicately cooked and served 
i meal awaiting him there. The old man waited 
I upon him with the skill of thorough training, 

|| while Mrs. Langdon sat at one corner of the 
! table and conversed with him. 
i “We had dinner all ready, waiting for 
; Johnny, and I have only given you part of 
;i it, as he is not ready for his,” she assured 
him. He regretted the trouble he must have 
caused. 

She appeared distressed at his want of appe- 
tite, although Godwyn assured her, with truth. 


34 A Hero’s Last Days, 

Ibf.t he was eatiDg more than he had done for 
some days. 

“It is not what I am' accustomed to see 
Johnny eat/’ said she. “ He has a regular 
liunter’s appetite.” 

“ Are all these his trophies?” asked Godwyn, 
looking at the pillars, which were all adorned 
with one or more pairs of deer horns. 

“ 0, no ; some are my father’s, who used to 
be a great hunter, and some are due to others 
— friends or cousins, some of them — who used 
to come up for the hunting season before the 
war.” 

She paused ; there may have been remi- 
niscences connected with the spoils of the hunt, , 
which could not bear being touched on. Pres- .. 
ently she began again: “More are Johnny’s I 
than belong to any one else, of course ; you v 
see he has spent four winters up here. See, f 
tliose are all his — ” and she indicated one corner ' 
of the hall. “ Yes, the bears’ skins, too.” ' 

“ He has had grand opportunities.” ' 

“ Yes ; luckily for us, he is a splendid shot.,| 
You can imagine it helps our housekeeping! 
not a little. It makes up a good deal to him, | 
too, for the dreariness he would otherwise feel I 
in the winters.” I' 

“ It must be dreary for ladies.” 1 


Or Nepenthe. 


35 


“ This hall is never dreary/’ said she ; “ fire 
is kept up in it all the time, and it inaTes the 
whole house pleasant. Then there is always 
plenty to do, and the children keep the house 
cheerful.” 

“ This house appears ingeniously arranged. 
Is it after a foreign model ? ” he asked 

“ Somewhat. We call it the Chalet.” 

“ I suppose it is well adapted to the cli- 
mate?” 

“ Yes. You must get my father to tell you 
how he built it. If you have finished your coffee, 
and I cannot get you to take anything more, 
suppose I take you to see him now.” 

“ I shall be g'lad.” 

They rose from the table, and he followed 
her into a fine library, at one end of which, 
with the weaning light falling with beautiful 
effect upon locks which had changed from 
black to white in the interval since Godwyn 
had seen him, sat his old colonel. Godwyn 
instantly divined the maidenly form which 
stood beside him to be that of Isabel. He per- 
ceived a strong likeness to little Una, in color- 
ing and the shape of her features ; prettier,” 
Isabel could not correctly be said to be ; love- 
lier, was the word to be used. There was a 
dignity, a repose, a deep thoughtfulness about 


3G A Hero’s Last Days, 

her countenance which her little sister’s would 
never attain to, thought Godwyn, instantly, 
in his own mind, confirming Amy’s dicta. 

Colonel Langdon rose to his feet as his eldest 
daughter approached him, telling him whom 
she had brought with her. His e3^es showed 
no sign of blindness, except by a certain fixed 
expression ; his figure was majestic ; God- 
wyn was struck by his resemblance to that 
melancholy but most impressive of the por- 
traits of Calhoun — the one taken just before 
his death. He held out his hand to Godwyn, 
and expressed his gratification at meeting him 
again, in a slow, measured sort of way, peculiar 
to him on some occasions. The consciousness 
of his misfortune was evidently forced on him 
this meeting, though he did not allude to 
it. The minds of all present were, indeed, oc- 
cupied with the same thing, to the exclusion 
of other thoughts, for the moment ; and this 
was doubtless the reason that neither he nor 
his eldest daughter remembered to intro- 
duce Mr. Godw^m to Isabel, who, perceiving 
that he was looking at her in some embar- 
rassment, as her father paused for a moment in 
his welcome, silently stretched out her hand 
to him. 

“ I thank you. Miss Langdon — is it not ? ” 


Or Nepenthe. 


37 


said he, catching himself stammering, as we 
have said he was apt to do. 

She bowed, indicating that he was not to in- 
terrupt her father, who had not perceived this 
greeting, and was beginning some inquiries. 
In answer to them, Godwyn informed him of 
the circumstances which had led to his meet- 
ing with his son that day upon the road, and 
afterwards gave him pretty much the same ac- 
count of the -years which had passed since the 
> war as he had then given to John Langdon. 

After a few more common-places, the blind 
man observed that, cut off, as they were, from 
the mails, they had had no news for three 
weeks of the Franco-Prussian war, then in pro- 
gress, and so dropped immediately into a con- 
versation with his guest upon that topic, during 
which the ladies took the opportunity of with- 
drawing — 2^®i’haps with a view to arrangements 
for Godwyn’s accommodation. 

Besides his occasional stammer, Godwyn’s 
I manner was often diffident ; yet this did not 
altogether hinder a power of compelling atten- 
tion, and a sort of conciliating charm he pos- 
sessed. Colonel Langdon was soon deeply 
I interested in the subject they were discussing, 
! and began to display the conversational powers 
for which he had been celebrated in his day. 

2 


38 


A Heroes Lad Days, 


There was no essential difference of opinion 
upon the subjects involved in the war in ques- 
tion ; both being, as was generally the case 
with ex-Confederates when that war began, in- 
clined to sympathize strongly with the French 
and their emperor, whose cause had not yet 
been separated from that of the French nation. 
Godwyn had the news of his capture to com- 
municate ; Colonel Langdon made predictions 
of its results, many of which were afterwards 
fulfilled ; yet, as it is believed many other 
thoughtful men did the same at the time, no 
special gift of prescience can be claimed for 
him in so doing. 

Except in regard to the latest telegraphic 
UlWS, it turned out that he was much better 
informed than Godwyn upon the whole matter, 
the late illness of the latter having interfered 
with his reading the newspapers. He was as- 
tonished at the knowledge of details displayed 
by his host, who explained it by a casual ob- 
servation on the kindness of various friends 
and relatives in supplying him with magazines, 
papers and new books. 

His statement was corroborated directly after 
by one of his little grandsons bringing in the 

very large mail, Avhich had come from A 

in the wagon. • 

i 


Or Nepenthe. 


39 


“ When I was a richer man,” observed the 
Colonel, “I did not feel that I could afford to 
indulge in the same amount of current litera- 
ture that I am now supplied with minus ex- 
pense, by the thoughtfulness of others. We 
are so well catered for in new novels that I 
believe my girls are as well ‘ up ’ in Phineas 
Finn, Lothair, and the rest of them, as the 
most advanced damsels of the period. I believe 
they could stand a pretty good examination in 
them, much better, I fear, than in English his- 
tory.” 

Godwyn said he had only heard the names 
of Messrs. Finn and Lothair — then recent 
publications. 

“Amy or Isabel will look them up for you 
with the greatest pleasure, no doubt,” said 
Colonel Langdon. “ In our present situation, 
they are cut off from opportunities for gossip, 
except over the affairs of such imaginary per- 
sons. You will be amused, I dare say, at the 
interest with which they are discussed some- 
times.. How^ever, it ill becomes me to ridicule 
an amusement I share, to a certain extent.” 

In fact, as Godwyn afterwards discovered, he 
took a keen interest in novels, of which he was 
an amusing critic. 

Godwyn remarked upon his good fortune in 


40 


A Hero's Last Days, 


having saved his library — an exception to the 
case of most of the gentlemen from his sec- 
tion. 

“ 1 am disposed to call it one of the mo'st 
visible providences connected with my life,” 
was the answer, made almost solemnly ; and 
an account was given of some seemingly acci- 
dental circumstances that had preserved the 
contents of his librar}^ when several other flat- 
loads of articles had been sunk as they were 
being removed from his sea island plantation 
during the war. 

It was growing dark. Presently, the door 
was thrown open, and light streamed in from 
the hall, wliile one of the children came to 
suggest that they had better come in to tea. 
They accordingly adjourned to the hall, where 
the rest of tlie family were all assembled. Tlie 
cold nightfall peculiar to the climate was sufli- 
ciently advanced for the Are, which had been 
kindled there, to he found cheering. Mrs. 
Langdon was dispensing cups of tea from a 
large urn, while Isabel called up to Godwyn’s 
mind the pretty picture of Kaulbach’s, repre- 
senting Charlotte giving the children bread 
and butter. lie sat, a silent, but not unin- 
terested listener to their chatter. f 

Mdien the meal .was over, there was a sudden 


Or Nejyenthe. 


41 




appearance of dusky forms, which seated them- 
selves upon a bench, near the door. Then 
that hush occurred in the children’s talks, 
which, in homes where the old custom of fam- 
ily prayer is kept up, shows that the time 
for it has arrived. After all present had joined 
in Bishop Keen’s old hymn — one clear voice, 
Isabel’s, soaring above the rest — Colonel Lang- 
don, standing, while they all knelt, himself 
pronounced the prayer, consisting of several 
collects, ended by the Lord’s prayer. 

Godwyn was more moved than might have 
been the case if he had not been totally un- 
accustomed to observances of this kind. There 
was something in his whole reception that 
recalled to his mind the simple account of 
Christian’s arrival at the House Beautiful, in 
the Pilgrim’s Progress, a book he had lighted 
on in childhood and knew almost by heart. 

“ ‘And they lead him to a chamber that was 
called Peace,’ ” said he to himself, when John 
Langdon, soon after, showed him to a room, 
entered from the gallery ; for his looks bad 
made it evident to his hosts that he was by 
this time in need of rest, and he could not deny 
that he was feeling some return of this morn- 
ing’s exhaustion. 

Upon returning to the hall afterwards, Joliii 


42 


A Heroes Last Days, 


Langdon gave his father and sister a more par- 
ticular account of their meeting in the morning 
than they had yet received, and expressed 
much anxiety about the state of his friend’s 
health. 

“ It seems he had a typhoid fever,” said he ; 
“ and I fear he may be going to have a relapse.” 

“ I hope we have got hold of him in time to 
save that,” said his father ; “ it was most for- 
tunate, your meeting him as you did. If any 
illness is coming on, it would have been almost 
sure to end fatally if he had had no better 
accommodation or nursing than he could have 
had within ten miles of this place. Poor 
Henrietta Beverly ! to think that her only son 
is so poor and unfriended as he seems to be ! ” 

“ She was quite an heiress, was she not, sir? ” 
“Yes; she had an unfortunate life. I think 
there is no doubt that that man, God.wyn, 
married her for her prospects. When I re- 
member her, she was a fine, handsome girl, — 
but I never saw her after her marriage.” 

“ Her husband was a Marylander? ” 

“ Yes ; she met him when she was at the 
.Virginia Springs with her father. After they 
were married, the old gentleman set them up 
with a plantation and negroes; but Godw^m 
could not stand that sort of life, and afterwards. 


Or Nepenthe. 


43 


I believe, old Mr. Beverly allowed them so 
much a year, and they lived about at the 
North. They were separated once or twice, 
and I believe they lost a great many children.” 

I remember his saying once that a good 
deal of his childhood had been spent in North- 
ern cities.” 

I dare say. She returned to the South after 
her husband’s death — which occurred about the 
same time as her father’s, I think. There was 
a good deal of property still, in land and 
negroes, — though it had rather gone to ruin 
during the old gentleman’s last years; but I 
heard that all that could be made went to pay 
off the interest on the debts that fellow Godwyn 
left. She lived alone with this boy on the 
plantation, as economically as she could, for 
several years. I believe she never went any- 
where but to church.” 

“ She came to see Godwyn once, when we 
were in college,” said John Langdon ; “ and I 
saw her at that time.” 

That was the time she sent Isabel that 
beautiful locket with the pearls set in it,” said 
Mrs. Langdon. 

“ What locket ? I did not know of it,” said 
her father. 

‘‘ I had forgotten it tOo,” said her brother ; 


44 


A Hero's Last Days, 


“ but I begin to recollect how it was. She 
asked me questions about all the family and 
wanted to see all their pictures and seemed 
particularly taken with one I had of Isabel, 
who was quite a little thing then.” 

“ She could not have been more than eight 
years old,” observed her sister. “ So that was 
the way she came to send it to her. It is 
evidently some sort of relic. What are the 
initials on it, Isabel ? ” 

“ I. L. G.,” answered Isabel. 

“ Are you sure not I. L. B. ? ” said her father. 
“ Old Mrs. Beverly’s mother was Isabel Lang- 
don, and it may have been hers; or it ma}^ 
have been a gift of his to some child of poor 
Henrietta’s.” 

“No doubt it was ; and it was very sweet of 
her to send it to Isabel,” said Mrs. Langdon. 

“The note that came with it was a little queer 
I remember thinking. She must have been a 
strange person ! ” 

“ She was,” said John ; “ but Godwyn always 
seemed devoted to her.” 

“ He is a fine young fellow,” said Colonel 
Langdon ; “ I never met one with more pleas- 
ing, modest manners ; and things he said this 
afternoon convinced me that he is high-toned, 
and right-thinking, if a little fine-spun in his 
theories.” 


Or Nepenthe. 


45 


CHAPTER III. 


“ 1 have walked awake with truth. 

Oh, when did a morning shine 
So rich in atonement as this for my dark dawn- 
ing youth, 

Darkened watching a mother decline, 

With that dead man at her heart and mine : 

For who was left to watch her but I ? 

Yet so did I let my freshness die.” 

[Tennyson. 

One of Alfred Godwyn’s characteristics was 
a remarkable power of recuperation from the 
I sufferings to which an over-sensitive tempera- 
, meiit exposed him, an extraordinary buoyancy 
; of both physical and mental constitution. 

His existence, up to the time when he was 
: introduced to the reader, had been chiefly 
■ passed in struggles against adverse circum- 
' stances of one kind or another. First, through 
I a delicate childhood, there had been a battle 
i for life itself ; and, since he had grown to man- 
hood, intellectual obstacles had been piled in 
the path he had been fain to tread. 

Many things had contributed to sadden his 
childhood ; among the worst were the displays 
he had been forced to witness of the degrada- 


46 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


tion of his father, in occasional fits of intoxica- 
tion ; yet even more bitter in remembrance, 
were the evidences of her misery, which had 
sometimes showed through the self-contained 
demeanor of his mother, a high-strung woman, 
of considerable force of character, who had 
concentrated iii^on him, the only survivor of 
several children, the passionate, yet severe 
tenderness of a deep nature that disappoint- 
ment had rendered stern. Owing even more ' 
to the impress of her character than to* her 
method of training the singularly susceptible 
spirit which had fallen into her hands, the ? 
sublime idea of duty had persuaded her son’s ' , 
very being from earlier than he could re- ' [ 
member, and had stayed his hands, more than , j 
once, from the act of suicide, to which he had I 1] 
been tempted when, in dumb, childish agonies ^ 
of spirit, the affectionate boy would sometimes o; 
roll over and over upon the floor of his solitary 
chamber, in impotent emotion, upon such oc-;- i 
casionsas have been referred to. j-/ 

The years which he had afterward spent, as ^ pj 
Colonel Langdon had related, on the lonely' i [j 
plantation with his mother, had been more j ^ 
peaceful ; and at college life had seemed about 
to open more brightly for the young man, who j pj. 


had been in full enjoyment of 



0?’ Nepenthe. 


47 


and looking forward to honors, when the war 
broke out to change the current of his ambi- 
tions. 

He threw his heart and soul into the South- 
ern cause. His mother’s ancestors had been 
distinguished in the history of South Carolina, 
and she, with all the traditional sentiments of 
a daughter of that State, had nursed the feeling 
of patriotism in his heart almost as sedulously 
as she had instiHed into it her somewhat stern, 
religious creed. He believed in the success of 
the Confederacy almost as in the truth of 
Christianity. 

His year of soldiering, no doubt, strengthened 
his constitution, and he owed to it a much 
finer physical development than he might 
have attained to, had his college course been 
continued. He had not had time to weary 
' of the mode of life, when he was taken prisoner, 
ij as has been related. 

!' Through his prison experiences he was sup- 
j ported by a high, unshaken faith ; but this 
principle was, if not completely destroyed in 
j him, yet deprived of power to sustain his 
I spirit, for a time, by the result of the war, 
so utterly confounding to his confident antici- 
pations. His mother’s old ascendency, even if 
he had not outgrown it, could no longer be 


48 


A Hero's Last Days, 


exercised, as she liad become a constantly 
suffering invalid. Tlie history of his inner 
life since then, had been that of a deeply 
earnest, isolated youthful si)irit, forced to ad- 
mit that certain conclusions it had been in the 
habit of drawing from the principles in which 
it had been educated, were false, and tempted 
therefore to doubt the truth of the principles 
themselves. His mind was of an intensely 
religious cast, and the flippant irreverent form 
of scepticism presented in much of the lite- 
rature of the day, was shocking to him. He 
felt it a necessity to make such thorough and 
faithful investigation into the foundations of 
all belief, as lay in his power, and had accor- 
dingly done so, through passages of gloom, 
s-uch as they must tread who have to venture 
upon such investigations alone. It had resulted 
finally in the satisfaction and repose of a con- 
firmed faith, not substantially differing from 
what he had formerly held, yet modified in 
certain points, and more elaborate and distinct 
in regard to others. Those which referred to 
the ordering of the course of the world, on 
which his difficulties had at first arisen, natu- 
rally assumed a certain prominence in the new 
superstructure of convictions which he had 
gradually reared for himself. What the chief 


49 


()r Nqjenthe. 

articles of that creed were, and how he had 
arrived at them, it will fall within the scope of 
this work to indicate ; at present, it may suffice 
to observe that, if he had been asked to name 
the fundamental distinctive of his faith, he 
would have answered: “ I believe in God, the 
Over-Ruler.” 

His thoug’hts had been drawn, at times, 
towards the adoption of each of the learned 
professions in turn ; but the means for the ne- 
cessary, special course of study had, until now, 
been out of his reach, and it had now become 
evident to him, that he had had no particular 
leaning towards any profession, but had been 
attracted towards each by the philosophic, as 
distinguished from the practical side. He had 
also a turn for mechanical contri\^nces, and 
perhaps an unusual faculty for mathematics ; 
though his strongest bent was towards literary 
I composition, in which his efforts, heretofore, 
had directed themselves into several curiously 
incongruous directions — as it might be thought. 
He imagined he saw in the literary calling, 
more than any other, a mode by which he 
; might yet realize old dreams of offering his 
life upon the altars of the State. He thouglit 
there was a special need in the South, just now, 
i for one or two, at least, to solemnly devote 


50 


A Hero's Last T)ays, 

their lives to her vindication, to the record of 
lier past, to the truthful portrayal of her social 
aspects and of the heroic and simple characters, 
which were the best arguments in hivour of her 
maligned institutions of the past, the remem- 
brance of which jnight cheer sinking hearts 
amid the wrecks of the present, and re-awaken 
asjn ration for the future. 

Just as he was beginning to feel his powers 
maturing for the tasks he proposed to himself, 
liad come, within intervals of not quite one 
year, the two attacks of fever, of which he had 
spoken to John Langdon. It seemed still hang- 
ing in doubt whether all his fond dreams of 
being of service to his generation were not to 
end in an early grave. In the despondency of 
extreme weariness, on the morning before his 
meeting with his friend upon the road in the 
manner related, he had made sure of a relapse 
and had said to himself that it would probably 
end fotally, without a wish tliat it should be 
otherwise, or rather with a strong wish that it 
might be so. 

“Accept, O God,” he had prayed, “ the sacri- 
fice of my life, and let it count with Thee for 
whatever it would have been worth if I had . 
lived, in behalf of what Tliou knowest I have ^ 
most at heart ! ” c 


51 


Or Nepenthe. 

With that had come a feeling of the deep 
contrariness of Me, which rendered it unlikely 
that his life would be taken just when he 
wished to be rid of it — then had come a sense 
of the inherent worthlessness of the sacrifice of 
an unvalued life, and of contrition for the 
impatience which had partly prompted his 
prayers. Activity of the brain was a usual 
accompaniment of feverishness with him ; and 
the mood in which he had found himself, had 
presently been given almost impromptu ex- 
pression in the following verses, the rhythm of 
which had seemed to beat itself out in time to 
the throbs of his head: 

What time before the morning 
Tlie pale stars fled away, 

And faint-tinged cloinls betokened 
The dawn’s still distant sway. 

There stood a youthful warrior ; 

Impatient for the fray, 

He cried : “ Slow, wearing hours. 

Bring on, bring on the day ! 

Bring on the day to crown or end my life ! 

Bring on the clash of arms, the glorious strife ! ” 

But, while we murmur at her slow delays, 

Nature her [)lacid dawn nor hastes nor stays- 

What time with fading splendour 
Slow waned the evening light, 

Again he prayed, that warrior, 

Defeated in the fight ; 


52 


A Heroes Last Days, 


The wounded and the dying 
Lay round him. left and right ; 

He cried : “ Slow-moving hour-^, 

Bring on, bring on the tdght! 

Bring on the darkness, bring sleep’s golden balm ! 
Bring on the blessed silence and the calm ! ” 

But, while we murmur at her slow delays, 

Nature her holy calm nor hastes nor stays 

But the point at which his friend overtook 
him, was, as has been said, to mark a turn in 
the tide of his life. 

Tlie angels of life and death were perhaps 
disputing over him at this time. “ Give him 
over to me; it is time that he should have 
rest,” said the one : No ; for I have much to 
teach him yet, and there is much for him to 
do,” said the other. Then, it may be, came a 
third being, — his eyes being blind-folded, while 
he bore the traditional bow and arrows, — who 
demanded : “ Give him over to my charge for 
awhile ! ” 

But the unfavorable powers which seemed 
to have had control over his fate thus far, were 
slow and reluctant in loosing their hold, and 
leaving him to the more kindly influences 
which were now to be permitted to have a 
share in his development. 

The night of his arrival at the Cludet was a 
restless and miserable one for him. As had hap- 


58 


Or Nepenth(^. 

peiied once or twice at other crises in his life, he 
was visited by strange dreams, that afterwards 
seemed to him almost like prophetic visions ; 
yet they were scarcely more than embodiments 
of the unshaped wishes that had passed through 
his mind during the course of the previous 
evening and of this tormented night. 

In one of these, a reminiscence of the air 
which John Langdon had played on the bugle, 
may have recalled his experience as a Con- 
federate soldier; for he seemed to be again 
going over the last charge upon his only battle- 
field. Presently he was conscious that the 
battle was over, and had ended in defeat ; it 
seemed that he was left standing alone, with 
a flag that he was still guarding ; but soon his 
old Colonel, bowed, aged and broken, as he had 
seen him the day before, approached and de- 
manded it of him, telling him : “ It is for my 
winding sheet; hut take this for yourself 
instead,” and with that he seemed to hand him 
some sort of jewel, and he awoke, vaguely 
grasping at it. 

In a second dream, he revisited his mother’s 
old plantation, where the happiest part of his 
life had been spent. He thought he was pacing 
in the twilight, as he had often done, up and 
down the long piazza, while, through an open 


54 


A Herd’s Last Days, 

window, the strains of an organ, which his 
mother had constantly played upon, were borne 
to his ear. In such a fashion his thoughts had 
often, in old days, set themselves to rhythms 
adapted to the solemn measures she was apt to 
prefer. Suddenly the music ceased ; a confused 
perception of her death came over him. ‘‘ She 
will make no more music for me,” he was 
saying to himself, when the sounds began again. 
He thought he ran to the window, strangely 
thrilled, expecting to behold her again ; but he 
perceived that it was not she who was seated 
at the organ, but the beautiful, young woman 
he had seen for the first time the day before ; yet 
it seemed as if his mother was standing in the 
shadow, near by her, quite unconscious of his 
presence, but regarding her with a look of 
affection in her eyes, such as he had never 
seen her give any one but himself. 

John Langdon, coming to his room the next 
morning at breakfast time, found him in a 
low fever, accompanied by extreme prostration, 
which continued for several days. There was 
also a tendency to mental excitement, at times 
amounting to semi-delirium, which caused 
much anxiety. 

Colonel Langdon — as was frequently the case 
with planters of the old regime — possessed con- 


Or Nepmthe. 55 

siderable practical knowledge of medicine, and 
treated the case to the best of his ability. No 
doubt, it was a source of satisfaction to him to 
feel himself of real use. He passed hours by 
the bedside of the patient, with a bell at hand, 
to call assistance if necessary. Naturally, he 
became deeply interested in his protege, who 
talked incessantly, — not at all in a rambling 
manner, most of the time. He grew in this 
way more familiar with the natural working 
of his mind than might have been the case in 
1 a long, ordinary acquaintance. He thought 
! he detected in the young man faculties for 
subtle thought and reasoning beyond what is 
common ; also he was surprised at the re- 
sources of his memory. Godwyn appeared, for 
I the greater part of the time, unconscious of the 
presence of a listener, and, being evidently in 
,i the hahit of reciting aloud to himself, used to 
repeat long extracts from Horace, from the 
! drama of Philip Van Artevelde, and from 
V^otdsworth ; also, at one time, he recited the 
whole of the Lied von der Glocke. He was 
afterwards oblivious of these feats of memory 
1 and, when informed of them, said that, although 
I lie had memorized the whole of the passages 
referred to, he could not have recalled them 
perfectly, in health. 


BG a Hero's Last Days, 

But it was in his reveries and numerous 
improvisations that the cast of his mind, his 
ambitions and secret springs of action, were 
best laid open to Colonel Langdon, who felt, in 
listening to his unconscious, self-revelations, 
as if he were intruding into his confidence in 
an unwarrantable manner. It ihight be that 
some of the projects of which he thus obtained , 
glimpses, were founded upon an over-estimate 
by Godwyn of his own powers; yet Colonel 
Langdon was disposed to regard this as atoned 
for by tlie apparent purity and nobleness of his 
aspirations ; and the effect of his discoveifies by 
no means tended to lower the young man 
in his opinion. 

Ke would willingly have assisted Godwyn 
towards the realization of his- wishes ; and it so 
happening that he had an opportunity^ just 
at this time, for a practical effort in that direc- 
tion, he could not wait to make it until the 
young man was well enough to know and 
approve what was to be done in Ins behalf. 

On the very day of Godwyn’s arrival, a letter 
liad come from an old friend, the president of a | 
college, to say that, if Colonel Langdon wished, | 
he thought he could procure the position ofjj: 
librarian for his son, as it was about to bet 
vacant. Such a post would not have suited] 


Or Nepenthe. 


John Langdon; but it immediately occurred 
that it would be the very thing for his friend. 
The salary, it was stated, was a good one, for a 
single man, and might be increased by the 
opportunity afforded of considerable leisure, 
for giving private lessons ; it seemed, therefore, 
that Godwyn, if lie obtained the position, 
would be safe from pecuniary anxiety, and 
free to deyote himself part of the time to lit- 
erary pursuits. Colonel Langdon, without de- 
lay, determined to send a messenger to A ^ 

after Godwyn’s baggage, and to dispatch a 
letter at the same time to recommend liis young 
relation for the post he declined for his son. 

After a few days of careful nursing, the fever 
abated, and Godwyn was soon able to be down 
stairs, becomingly thoroughly domesticated at 
the Chfdet, during his convalescence; indeed 
he would have willingly endured far more, for 
the pleasure of the familiar footing on which 
this quickly put him with tlie whole family. 
The trifling pleasures tliat spring up unnoticed 
in the daily intercourse of a large and affec- 
tionate household, luid hitherto been unknown 
to him, and he was singularly susceptible to 
their charm. The kindly little courtesies he 
hourly received, the manner in which the stages 
of his recovery were hailed as pleasant events, 


58 


A Hero’s Last Days, 

were to him no matter-of-course circumstances t 
attendant upon having been ill, but pleasing sur- 
prises, to be laid up in grateful remembrance ; 
and such things, adding their influence to the . 
sensations of reviving health, contributed to 
make him wonderfully happy. ; 

He began to contract a particular friendship ' 
for almost every individual in the house, in- 
cluding the old man-servant and his wife who 
had waited on him during his illness ; and, as 
growing intimacy revealed shades of clTaracter, 
the relations in which each member of the 
family stood to the others, and the workings of 
different traits upon different natures, became 
an interesting study to him. 

It was most beautiful to see the manner in 
which Colonel Langdon was treated by all of 
his children ; it was evident that his affliction 
was never for a moment forgotten by the elder 
ones ; there was something sad in the tender 
reverence which they observed towards him. 
The children were more free with him, giving 
ready-witted replies to his occasional rallyings. 
He acted as their tutor, causing them to repeat 
their tasks to each other in his hearing. He 
told Godwyn that this occupation had appeared 
tedious to him at first, but that he now found 
it rather interesting ; and Godwyn perceived 




Or Nepenthe. 59 

that the docility and intelligence of the chil- 
dren might well make the work pleasant, even 
to a man of Colonel Langdon’s attainments. 
He could scarcely feel that they belonged to 
the same order of beings as even the most 
intelligent of his late scholars. Their extraor- 
dinary superiority could not, he thought, be 
altogether due to the fact of their being the off- 
shoots of a more cultivated grade of society — 
something must also be owing to the peculiar 
refining influences by which they were sur- 
rounded. What manner of men and women 
might they not be expected to grow into, 
reared in an atmosphere of such high culture, 
in the midst of the grand simplicities of nature, 
yet with examples of heroic patience and beau- 
tiful unselfishness ever before their eyes ? 

The gentle-mannered young widow, much 
engrossed by tlie care of the house and of her two 
boys, was one not easily open to new interests, 
and Godwyn owed the special attention with 
which she treated him, to the fact that tier pity 
had been awakened by his illness. He was 
grateful for the thoughtfulness of his comfort 
in little things which she showed, and soon 
accorded her a higher place in his regard than 
he perhaps occupied in hers ; for her interest 
in him decreased as his health improved — but 


GO 


A Hero’s Last Lays, 


in so courteous a lady the fact did not force : 
itself upon his observation. Why was it that 
he found her so much more approachable than 
Isabel ? 

Not a single coquettish art was employed by 
that young lady to assist him over the first , 
stages of a romantic passion. He hardly saw 
her out of her father’s presence, and her ex -• j 
istence seemed almost merged in his. There j 
was no awkwardness in her behaviour towards I 
Godwyn ; she was as gently friendly as her | 
sister, when it came in her way to be so, being j 
totally unsuspicious of his feeling for her, — only 
it ver}^ rarely happened to come in her way ; ■ 

and there was so much of reverence in the love 
she awakened that she was likely to remain 
long ignorant of that love. Once or twice, she ' 
fancied he seemed more at ease with her sister \ 
than with herself — little imagining that the | 
chief attraction he found in them was their I 
resemblance to her. Little Una’s likeness, in J 
particular, invested the child’s natural win- I 
someness with additional charms ; he regarded I 
her as a sort of childish embodiment of Isabel. 1 

The little one^ were disposed to favour him |' 
with a good deal of their society and undertook | , 
to guide him, as his increasing strength per- t 
mitted, to all the points of interest about the « 


Or Nepenthe. 


61 


farm or in the neighborhood. Their favourite 
haunts were apt to be connected with traditions 
of the childhood of the elder portion of the 
- family, which Godwyn was ever ready to listen 
to. The twin heights behind the house, for 
instance, were named, respectively, Virginia’s 
and Isabel’s Alps, in memory of the days when 
Quits had been the favourite novel of the two 
girls ; various glens, springs and waterfalls 
bore traces, in their nomenclature, of their 
familiarity with Scott’s novels; and a pictur- 
, esque little cave, on^*b perhaps inhabited by 
bears or Indians, went by the name of Isabel’s 
I Baby-house. Godwyn found in such commu- 
nications “sweet records, promises as sweet.” 

I His trunk had been brought from A by 

j the same man whom Colonel Langdon had 
, despatched with his letter applying for* the 
librarian’s position. Godwyn had been in- 
formed of what had been done in his behalf ^is 
soon as he was better, and had been very 
grateful for the kindness. It had come to be 
understood that he was to remain at the Chidet, 
at any rate until Colonel Langdon had received 
an answer to that application, upon the success 
of Avhich it was not in nature that the young- 
man should not begin to build bright dreams. 


62 ‘ 


A Hero's Last Days, 


CHAPTER IV. 

“ Fair were our visions ! Oh ! they were as grand 
As ever floated out of Fairy Land ; 

Children were we in simple faith, 

But God-like cdiildren, whom nor death, 

Nor threat of danger drove from Honour’s path 
In the land where we were dreaming. 

Proud were our men, as pride of birth could render, 

As violets, our women, pure and tender, 

* * * * * * * * 

Though in our land we had both bond and free. 

Both were content, and so God let them be. 

In the land where we were dreaming.” 

[D. B. Lucas. 

Paramount as Isabel Langdon was disposed 
to consider her father’s claims, it was inevita- 
ble, in the family circumstances, that various 
other demands should be made upon her time 
in the course of the day, and her father would 
always insist upon her leaving him in such 
cases. He and his son — Avhose duties called 
him out to the farm betimes — were extremely 
early risers; and Isabel, by getting up at the 
same liour, found that she could secure nearly 
two hours for reading to him Avithout interrup- 
tion. It had grown to be a habit for her to 


I 


Or Nepenthe. 


63 


wait on them both with coffee, made by her own 
liands, long before the rest of the family were 
up. 

Before his blindness had fallen upon him, 
Colonel Langdon had always appeared to be a 
bright-tempered man ; but though a cheerful, 
his had never been a sanguine spirit; for there 
had always been an underlying melancholy 
vein about him, which now, when he supposed 
himself alone, would often overcome his self- 
control so that he would allow himself to give 
utterance to sighs that seemed to come from the 
very depths of his heart, or to short and affect- 
ing ejaculatory prayers. Knowing how apt he 
was to fall into fits of dejection, Isabel had, 
many a time, left him with tears in her eyes, 
to go, at his bidding, about what would other- 
wise have been cheerful, congenial tasks. It 
was to save him from solitary musings that she 
liad begun the habit referred to, and she had 
lier re^vard, in that there was no time when he 
seemed so much his former self, as in the fresh- 
ness of these early morning readings. 

By a long course of training under his criti- 
cism, she had learned to modulate her sweet 
voice so that it was a pleasure to listen to her 
reading, independent of the sense conveyed. 
But hers had been a training of something 


64 


A Hero's Last Days, 


more than voice; not following the plan of 
Milton with his daughters, her father had 
gradually, without being altogether sensible of 
it, required her to go along with the comments 
of his cultivated understanding upon the most 
difficult authors. Her stock of information 
on many points might not have equalled that 
of some boarding-school misses in these days ; 
but in so far as the exercise of the thinking 
faculties was concerned, her education had been 
of a high order. That power of independent 
thought, which is the result of perfect growth, 
she had still to attain ; she had attempted no 
move, so far, than to follow and comprehend 
her father’s views, and he was therefore not 
altogether unjust in treating her more like a 
child thaii a companion capable of reasoning. 

One morning, about a fortnight after God- 
wyn’s arrival, she imparted to her father and 
brother, while giving them their coffee, her 
suspicion that several pieces, signed with ini- 
tials the same as his, which had appeared in a 
magazine they had been in the habit of seeing, 
had been written by him. 

“ Articles on education, were they not ? I / 
think I remember them,” said her father. ( 

“ There were a good many verses too, at dif- i 
ferent times.” 4 


Or Nepenthe. 


65 


“ Very likely,” he rejoined ; “ I have sus- 
pected for some time that we had a poet on our 
liands ; but I have no recollection of his 
rhymes.” . 

“ You seemed to like some of them,” said 
she, a little mortified at the small importance 
he seemed to attach to the discovery of a dis- 
ciple of the Muses. 

“ I begin to have a vague recollection of sym- 
pathizing with the ‘ unreconstructedness ’ of A. 
B. G. ; I don’t think I committed myself to 
more than that. I am quite ready to give 
them a re-hearing, if you like to give me a 
small dose of them directly.” 

“ If Godwyn really wrote the pieces, I would 
not mind reading them myself,” said John 
Langdon, “ but I shall make sure of the fact 
before I set about it.” 

‘‘ He says it like a man willing to sacrifice 
himself when it is due to a friend,” said his 
father. 

Well ; I am not much given to poetr}^ you 
know ; still, if Godwyn wrote it, it is the least 
his friends can do to read it.” 

To read their poetry is more than I should 
like to do for some of my friends,” observed 
Colonel Langdon, ^‘and not at all dull men 
either ; very clever fellows have failed at it. I 


66 


A Heroes Last Days,, 


suppose there are few who have not tried their 
hand at verses at some time or other ; in fact, I 
believe the class of writers of poetry to be 
larger than that of readers. Yet it is astonish- 
ing how little is produced that is worth read- 
ing. Let us hope our friend has been more 
successful in his efforts than is usual. If he 
has not, it is no disgrace to a fine, right-think- 
ing young fellow, as he appears to be, to have 
printed a little harmless nonsense.” 

Well, Isabel, put them together, after you get 
through, so that I may look them over, if they 
are his,” said her brother, as he left the room. 

There is one called ‘A Vow,’” said Isabel, 
turning over the magazines in search of A. B. 
G.’s signature. 

“ Nothing love-sick, I hope!” 

Now, papa ! It is nothing of the kind.” 

^ “ Well, well, go on; I am all attention.” 

She read with beautiful, careful enunciation, 
which would have put a soul into the most in- 
significant words : 

A, VOW. 

My Carolina, for thy sake 
I prayed of God iny life to take. 

It may be that He heard the prayer, 
xVlthongh He chose that life to spare ; 

It may be He will teach me yet 
Bow I may live to pay the debt, 


67 


Or Nepenthe. 

I call myself no more my own ; 

I vow to live for tliee alone. 

If I forget this vow to thee, 

Then let my eyes forget to see ! 

Let my right hand its uses lose, 

And let my tongue to speak refuse ! 

All that I am, all that is mine. 

It is and shall be only thine. 

Thou may’st o’erlook or little prize 
My service, yea, thou may’st despise 
My love and song, yet thou shalt claim 
My fealty evermore the same. 

What was the confusion of the fair reader, 
as she finished, to perceive that Godwyn was 
standing in the doorway ! 

He stammered something about having come 
down in search of a book ; but his manner 
showed that he had overheard and recognized 
the verses. His embarrassed sentence caught 
Colonel Langdon’s ear, and enabled him to 
comprehend the situation. 

“ Good morning ! ’’said he, pleasantly. “ You 
see we have got hold of one of your poems — 
that is, if we are not mistaken in regard to the 
authorship.” 

Godwyn, still stammering, said the piece 
had been written long before — was a very 
youthful production of his. 

‘Ht was written before the days of recon- 


08 


I limy’s Last Days, 


struction, I presume,” said Colonel Langclon. 
“You could hardly _write in that spirit about 
Carolina now.” 

“ Indeed, Colonel Langdon, I hope ever to 
feel the same.” 

“ I cannot understand how that is possible,” 
was the reply. “ For my own part, I cannot 
render any sort of fealty to the now-existing 
State government ; the Carolina of the past, 
which commanded my devotion, I look upon 
as lying in death — hopeless of resurrection, as 
it were — nay, as reall}^ blotted out of existence.” 

“ Surely, that is only in one sense. Colonel 
Langdon ! ” 

“ But the most essential. The life, the spirit 
is departed.” 

“ The spirit of its old government certainly is ; 
and before defending my position in still feel- 
ing it possible to keep my allegiance to the 
State, I must say that it is impossible for one 
with the principles I hold, ever to feel any 
attachment to either the present State or Federal 
governments until they have been again modi- 
fied into constitutional instead of absolute 
forms.” 

“ The Federal Government had been drifting 
into absolute democracy long before the war ; 
and it was the conviction of the fact which had 


Or Nepenthe. 


G9 


gradually lost it tlie allegiance of the Southern 
people. The. Northern state governments had 
assumed that form almost from the beginning, 
and now, reconstruction has forced itself upon 
the South.” 

“ I suppose none of us fully realized, at the 
time of the fall of the Confederacy, how the 
consequences would affect our State govern- 
ments,” said Godwyn. ‘‘ It was sufficiently 
bitter to feel ourselves forced to live under the 
rule of the North as regarded all matters in 
which the Federal Government was con- 
cerned.” 

You belong to the generation which grew 
up after the feeling of attachment to the Union 
had almost died out in South Carolina.” 

“Yes; I had no conception of patriotism 
except in my feeling for my own State ; but 
the war taught me to extend it to the whole 
South,” said Godwyn. “ If the condition of 
South Carolina had been unaffected by the re- 
sult, and the rest of the South only had suffered, 
I think I should have felt the fall of the Con- 
federacy equally.” 

“ The advocates of States’ Rights always as- 
serted that a particular regard for one’s own 
State need not interfere with the sentiment for 
the nationality with which the State casts in its 
fortunes,” observed Colonel Langdon. 


70 


A Hei'o’s Lad Days, 


“To suppose that it must,” said Godwyn, “is 
surely no more reasonable than the opinion 
that the indulgence of any particular affection 
interferes with broader sentiments.” 

“ It may do so,” said Colonel Langdon ; “ but 
even if it was very often the case, a danger to 
which particular affections make one liable is 
not to be confounded with a direct tendency of 
such affections.” 

“ That is an important distinction, sir.” 

“ Not drawn by me, however, but by Bishop 
Butler, in one of those sermons which seem to 
me as worthy of study as his Analog}^ itself,” 
said Colonel Langdon. “ It is strange, by the 
way, how applicable the two which bear on 
political subjects are to the events Avithin our 
experience. There is a passage in the one 
upon the death of Charles the First which is 
strikingly appropriate to the destruction of 
the constitutions of the Southern States.” 

“ I do not remember it,” said Godwyn. 

“ You can find it, I think, Isabel,” said her 
father. “ I remember calling your attention 
to it.” 

AVhile she was looking it up. Colonel Lang- ' 
don continued : “ There is a curious parallel- 

ism beLveen our present condition and that of • 
the cavaliers in the time of CromweH’s ascend-^ 


Or Nepenthe. 


71 


ency, more striking than tliat which also exists 
between our case and that of the Puritans at 
a subsequent period ; though I lately found a 
certain suitability to the present in Milton’s 
reflections during his old age.” 

“ It seems as if we, in our war,” said Godwyn, 
“ were only fighting over, on a vaster field, the 
battles of our ancestors in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, — as in a picture I have seen, in which the 
spirits of the dead bodies upon a battle-field in 
the foreground, are seen renewing their con- 
test in the fields of the air.” 

“It was the old, eternal conflict between the 
conservative and revolutionary principles,” 
said Colonel Langdon ; “but, this time, the 
stigma of rebellion was, somehow, cast upon 
the conservatives.” 

Here Isabel announced that she had found 
the passage, and, at her father’s request, read 
it aloud. 

“The destruction of a free constitution of govern- 
inent, though men see or fancy many defects in it, and 
whatever they design or pretend, ought not to be 
thought of without horror. For the design is, in itself, 
unjust, since it is romantic to suppose it legal ; it can- 
not be prosecuted without the most widespread means, 
nor accomplished but with the present ruin of liberty, 
religious as well as civil ; for it must be the ruin of its 
present security. Whereas the restoration of it must 


72 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


depend on a thousand contingencies, the integrity, un- 
derstanding, power of the persons into whose hands 
anarchy and confusion would throw things, and who 
they will be, the history before us may surely serve to 
show, no human foresight can determine ; even though 
such a terrible crisis were to happen in an age not dis- 
tinguished for the want of principle and public spirit,” 

“ Thank you, that is enough,” said Colonel 
Langdon. “ So much for tlie guilt of the per- 
petrators of reconstruction ; though the action 
may have presented itself in different colors to 
such of them as had any further motive than 
that of prolonging their party’s tenure in office 
by means of negro suffrage.” 

“ But for the reckless extension of that suf- 
frage, and transformation of the State govern- 
ments, consequently, into machines for the 
subjection of masters to their former slaves,” 
said Godwyn, “ it might have been found that 
the existence of the two races together in free- 
dom, would have acted as a check upon the 
tendency of the governments to assume the 
absolute forni ; and, in future, may it not yet 
do so ? ” 

“ How things would have worked, if the old 
constitutions had been left to adapt themselves 
to the new order brought about by abolition, 
can, of course, only be guessed,” said Colonel 
Langdon ; “ but it cannot be doubted that the 


Or Nepenthe. 


73 


antagonistic attitude between the races at 
present has been precipitated by the negro’s 
having been given a weapon he was not fit to 
use.” 

“ I sometimes fear,” said Godwyn, “that 
there can never be a really good understand- 
ing between them again. If the whites should 
regain political ascendenc}^ their feeling against 
the negroes will be softened ; but the latter, 
having become imbued with ambition to rule, 
will be dissatisfied and restless.” 

“ The problems before us may be solved 
eventually,” said Colonel Langdon, “by his 
dying out, as the Indian has done, unable to 
maintain himself utider the strain of civiliza- 
tion without the protection of slavery — for that 
it acted as a protection* against the evils of 
civilization cannot be denied, when we compare 
the increase of the black with the decrease of 
the red man on this continent.” 

“ When I said something like that to a North- 

*At tlie time this conversation is related to have taken 
place, freedom had only begun to develop its natural 
efiects upon a people not prepared to exercise self-re- 
straint. The habit of drunkenness increasing, among the 
negroes at present, may serve as an illustration of the 
evils consequent upon emancipation. It remains to be 
seen if the constitution of the race will be able to resist 
the effects of this habit better than that of the Indian. 

3 


74 


A Hero's Last Days, 


erii person, last winter,” said Godwyn, “ the 
reply was that it was better for them to die out 
than to live in slavery ” 

“ I believe that opinion is seriously held at 
the North,” said Colonel Langdon. ‘‘ When 
arguing formerly with Northern people, their 
answer was always ready : that my position af- 
fected my judgment, when I declared I could 
perceive nothing essentially unnatural in the 
relations between master and slave, and that 
they afforded an opportunity for the favorable 
development of the highest qualities of both 
races ; for, though they were, I admitted, liable 
to abuse, like other natural relations. I could 
never believe myself prejudiced in favor of 
slavery; because, personally, the responsibili- 
ties of ownership always weighed on me heavily, 
and I felt emancipation an immense relief” 

“ It is curious, how universal that feeling was 
at the time,” said Godwyn. “ Perhaps the 
scarcity that made the providing for negroes 
a burden just then, was one reason for it. I 
heard men reputed mean and avaricious, ex- 
press the same sentiment. Most people felt 
that it was we who had been freed, not the 
negroes — as my mother expressed it.” 

“ There was not that feeling of resentment 
upon account of emancipation, that was left by 


Or Nepenthe. 


75 

the destruction of property,” said Colonel 
Langdon ; “ though the manner in which it 
was brought about was a great wrong. But the 
establishment of slavery was brought about by 
great wrongs also. In itself I can not believe 
it to have been an evil, and it may have been 
designed for the Christianization of the African 
race. It must be admitted to have done more to 
that end that any other agency is likely to effect.” 

I remember, when I was quite a little boy, 
hearing ‘ Uncle Tom’s Cabin ’ discussed at the 
North,” said Godwyn, “ and the impression 
made on me b}^ my mother’s remark, that it 
ought to be considered a defence of slavery that 
it produced such a character as ‘ Uncle Tom.’ ” 

“ Undoubtedly it did produce such charac- 
ters, though they were rare,” said Colonel 
Langdon ; “ but the general, wonderful pro- 
priety of their behaviour at the time of eman- 
cipation — the utter absence of the Caliban-like 
exultation that might have been an accom- 
paniment of unexpected freedom — was a still 
more remarkable proof than exceptional indi- 
vidual characters could be of the humanizing 
character of the institution of slavery, as it ex- 
isted among us, compared, say with the West 
Indians.” 

“ The Caliban element, however, which cer- 


7(3 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


taiiily exists in the negro, is coming out in the 
orgies of the present Legislature of South Caro- 
lina/’ observed Godwyn. 

“ I feel quite willing,” said Colonel Langdon, 
“to rest the vindication of our institutions 
upon the physical and moral status of the 
colored race when they were emancipated, 
compared with what it will be twenty 3^ears 
hence. I consider the free negro capable of 
being no more than a drag-weight upon our 
civilization, — as indeed he has always been, to a 
certain extent, upon our material development.” 

“ May not we hope,” said Godwyn, “ that our 
civilization may be able to sustain the drag- 
weight here, even under new and heavier con- 
ditions ?” 

“ I fear not ; in fact it has not, — witness the 
^ retrograde movement of the last five years. 
We were able to support the weight before, only 
because we were stimulated by the powerful 
motive forces of well constituted state govern- 
ments, of which we are now deprived. I con- 
fess I fear we tend towards a state of society 
such as exists in Central America. I despair, 
yes, I despair for my country.” 

Colonel Langdon uttered the last sentence 
with an indescribably affecting solemnity, and, 
as he ended it, liis head sunk forward upon his 


Or Nepenthe. 


77 


breast, conveying his feeling of hopelessness in 
a most impressive manner. Godwyn was 
much moved by this action, and even more by 
the effect it produced upon Isabel ; the words he 
wished to utter died upon his lips, as he per- 
ceived that large tears had gathered in her 
beautiful eyes. Witli a sliglit gesture, to dep- 
recate his calling her father’s attention to her 
action, she, immediately after, left the room, so 
noiselessly that the blind man, sunk in thought, 
seemed to observe nothing, until the slight 
sound made by the closing of the door roused 
him. 

“ I had quite forgotten she was present,” he 
said, when Godwyn, at his question, explained 
that the sound was caused by Isabel’s depar- 
ture ; “ I fear I distressed her. She deserved 
more consideration at my hands ; for a minis- 
tering angel could not be more kind than she 
is to me in this affliction of mine. Yetii higher 
motive still, ought to have restrained my utter- 
ance of such thoughts, — what are we tliat we 
should undertake to forecast evil? ’Tis the 
merest presumptuous folly.” * 

* It is conceived that, as in life, grave discourse, girl- 
hood’s tears, youth’s aspirations and childhood’s prattle 
are often inextricably woven together, they ought not 
to be found incongruous in representations of life in- 


78 


A Hero's Last Daijs, 


Just then, one of the children came in with 
morning greetings, and he instantly resumed 
his usual manner. Did the profound melan- 
choly of which Godwyn had caught this mo- 
mentary glimpse represent a passing mood, or 
the fixed habit of his mind? 


tended for mature minds. No apology, therefore, seems j 
to the writer to be due for the gravity of the con versa- L 
tions recorded in this book ; but on other grounds one | 
perhaps ought to be offered for the discourse related I 
al)Ovc, as tliere is less in it than in any of the others of 
what is supposed to set forth new ways of looking at 
things, and to have something to say that seems not to 
have been already said, and needs to be said, is the r 
only sufficient reason for attempting to write on such j 
subjects. The excuse then is, that short, distinct s'ate- f 
ments of the attitude of mind, after the war, of gen- | 
tlemen like Colonel Langdon and Godwyn are really 
rare, and something of the sort seemed not unneces- 


sary for the plear understanding of the elements of 
belief, out of which the theory set forth in this book 
was evolved. 


Or Nepenthe. ^ 


■ 71 ) 


CHAPTER V. 

“ The Ijeart of man is set to be 
The centre of the world, about the which 
TJiose revolutions of disturbances 

Still roll ; where all th’ aspects of misery 
Predominate ; whose strong effects are such 
. As he must bear, being powerless to redress — 
Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! ” 

Some hours later, on the same day that the 
( onversation related in the previous chapter 
had occurred, while Colonel Langdon was occu- 
j)ied with the children’s lessoiis in the library, 
Godwyn found himself with the two ladies in a 
small parlor, opening into it, which Avas their 
especial domain, but which he had become free 
of during his convalescence. Mrs. Langdon, 
ignorant of the occurrence of the morning, made 
some remarks upon her father’s having seemed 
unusually cheerful of late. 

“Until this morning,” said Godwyn, “he has 
appeared so; hut I begin to see that he is 
not naturally inclined to take bright views of 
things.” 

“ 1 think he tries to see it, when there is a 
bright side,” said Isabel. 


80 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


There always is/’ Godwyn said, “ if not 
positively, yet a comparatively bright side. 
And even if we are not able to see it, let us not 
lose faith in the existence of light, The denial 
of hope leads to apathy, not to true resignation.” 

“ Papa is not apathetic,” said she, quickly ; 
but immediately added : “ Excuse me. You 
did not intend any reflection on him.” 

• “ Indeed I did not ; I was thinking of the 
general principle ; but I should have made my 
remarks exceptional ; there may be cases where 
despair itself cannot overcome the principle of 
faithfulness in a lofty mind ; and that cannot 
consist with apathy. Yet observe — despair is 
a temptation, from the stand-point of Christian 
belief; the faithfulness which it may not over- 
throw is the old heathen the result of 
which is stoic fortitude, not the acquiescent 
and gentle endurance of the faith which is 
allied to hope.” 

“ What is that ?” suddenly broke in the voice 
of Colonel Langdon, as he entered the room, 
led by one of the children. 

It is not unlikely that, when the last part of 
Godwyn’s remark was repeated to him, he di- 
vined the half-reference to himself that had 
drawn it forth ; if he did, he did not resent it. 
He seemed to consider deeply for a moment, 


Or Nepenthe. 


81 


and then said, in his measured way : Christian 
faith is confidence in the unseen for spiritual 
results, and may be found not inconsistent with 
the abandonment of hope in regard to tempo- 
ral affairs — including national.” 

“ I accept the definition of faith,” said God- 
wyn ; “ but do you hold that we may not exer- 
cise faith and anticipate spiritual results in 
regard to — perhaps I should say in behalf of — 
nations as well as individuals ?” 

‘‘ I wish you could prove to me that we are 
authorized to do so,” said Colonel Langdon, 
“ though I must tell you I fear you will not be 
able. This is a topic which I have often con- 
sidered and discussed, without being able to 
satisfy myself with conclusions, and I should 
like to pursue it with you.” 

I have bestowed much thought on it also,” 
said Godwyn, “ and I will own to you, I seem 
to myself to have arrived at the true theory 
on this subject; yet I often feel conscious that 
my conceptions are still very crude. It may 
be that you will help to correct them. Still I 
hope they are founded in reason, and that 
I will be able to defend the hope and faith I 
found on them, and the consequent attitude 
I hold to in regard to the State, which you said 
this morning you could not assume,” 


82 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


Indeed,” said Colonel Langdon, “ your faith 
and hope seem almost like a’ rebuke to me, and 
I must regret seeming to come into conflict 
with them. Though unable to entertain them 
myself, why should I try to destroy what may 
help to make life hearable to you ?” 

“ Sir,”,said Godwyn, “ I have had one severe 
lesson already on the folly of entertaining hopes 
founded on mistaken views of things on this 
very subject of the true theory of national life ; 
and I believe it safer to face the sternest truths 
than to delude one’s self; if, therefore, my 
present views are erroneous, the sooner I am 
convinced of it the better. As I told you, I 
often feel that I have only attained crudities as 
yet.” 

“After all, the wisest of us can do no more; 
human wisdom is but a comparative thing at 
best,” said Colonel Langdon. “ The progress, 
or even the errors of an earnest mind are never 
uninteresting — and such a mind I can well be- 
lieve yours to be. As you say, it may be well 
for you to find out, if you are mistaken ; and 
it certainly will be no subject of regret for me, 
if you are able to convince me that you are 
not.” 

“ I shall begin, then,” said Godwyn, “ by 
saying that there appear to he two distinct, 


Or Nepenthe. 


83 


concrete ideas conveyed by the word ^ State, ’ 
as we ordinarily use it. The one represents 
the embodiment of the organization of the 
government, as if it were a beneficent, pro- 
tective system or power. It was under this 
aspect that you referred to the Carolina of the 
past, which commanded your allegiance, as 
blotted out of existence ; and I admit that, in 
this sense, the life is altogether gone out of her 
organization, and is not to be revived.” 

“ The scheme of her peculiar constitution,” 
said Colonel Langdon, ‘‘ grew out of slow pro- 
cesses ; no possible revolution could restore 
the conditions of birth and gradual growth, 
which made her what she was.” 

“ The other -aspect,” said Godwyn, “ pre- 
sents the State as the personification of the 
people identified with her soil. The vitality 
of the ideal existence of Carolina, under this 
aspect, cannot be destroyed, so long as we re- 
main a distinct people.” 

Here, I think, I must take issue with you,” 
said Colonel Langdon. So close is the con- 
nection between what we may call the person- 
ality of a whole people, and the character of 
the organization of its government, that, if you 
call entirely destroy the scheme' of the latter — 
and riever has any structure of society been 


84 


A Hero’s Last Hays, 


more completely destroyed in its very founda- 
tions than ours — the effect is an inevitable 
disappearance, in the end, of those essential 
characteristics of a people which may be sup- 
posed to constitute its peculiar and individual 
being.” 

“ The character of an individual,” said God- 
wyn, “ under altered circumstances, sometimes 
undergoes such a change that it is said he is 
no longer the same man ; but when such an 
expression is used, it is not meant that his 
identity has really been destroyed, but merely 
that he has altered, or that a new phase of 
his character has been developed. Now, it 
seems to me that, when the State is considered 
as identified with her people, the form of gov- 
ernment sinks into a mere fortunate or unfor- 
tunate circumstance affecting its development.” 

“ But a circumstance of the vastest import- 
ance,” said Colonel Langdon ; “ in fact, in the 
occurrence of a radical change in the character 
of a people, consequent upon such an overthrow 
as we are considering of the very constitution 
of its society, I must look upon it as imma- 
terial whether the vitality of the ideal existence 
of the State, as identified with the people, is 
regarded as annihilated or not ; the result is 
equivalent. It is the bearing of the character 


85 


Or Nepenthe. 

of the government on the moral nature of the 
people which makes its downfall or continu- 
ance of much more importance than could 
otherwise . he the case ; for, after all, the best 
scheme of government, though so perfect as to 
be a fit type of God’s kingdom, can be but a 
part of the present probationary system of 
things, and its duration is necessarily finite ; 
but its effect upon human character, the ten- 
dency of which may be fixed in this life, eter- 
nity only can measure.” 

“ I remember, when I was once reflecting on 
the fall of the Confederacy,” said Godwyn, “ it 
seemed to me that its destruction, after all, 
might be of less real moment than the death 
of the meanest soldier who died for the cause ; 
for it affected a merely finite form of being ; 
even if the result was the rendering of the 
lives of a whole generation harder than they 
would otherwise have been, the separate lives 
of the millions which would make it up, all 
added together, would not equal the duration 
we believe to be assigned to one human soul, 
nor what might be endured by them all, equal 
what might be suffered by one lost spirit.” 

“ An idea too awful to be realized. We were 
not meant to dwell on such speculations,” said 
Colonel Langdon. I believe the result of the 


86 


^4 Heroes Last Days, 


war actually has affected the lives of the present 
generation to an extraordinary extent. With 
us, at present, every private life is harrassed 
hy the direct or indirect consequences of the 
overthrow of our domestic institutions ; it is 
not merely that public affairs and the adminis- 
tration of law are directed by worthless and 
ignorant persons; but the minutest house- 
hold matters are continually disturbed. I can 
take small consolation, under present circum- 
stances, from reflections like those of Gold- 
smith’s traveller : 

‘In every government, though terrors reign, 

Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain — 

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, 
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.’ ” 

“ I have sometimes thought,” said Godwyn, 
“ that, restrained as our men are now in every 
honorable ambition, subject to mortification, 
and hampered in every calling, the times are 
even harder upon women, reared as ours were, 
to be waited on, but now forced to menial tasks, 
and often to a hard struggle for a support.” 

“ The life of a planter’s wife formerly, how- 
ever,” said Colonel Langdon, “ was no easy one, 
as I can testify by observation of one wlio was, 
I often thought, the very type of 

‘The reason firm, the temperate wid, 

^Indurance, foresight, strength and skill,’ 


Or Nepenthe. 87 

that Wordsworth depicts in his perfect woman. 
I often wondered at what she used to accomplish, 
and indeed I think none of her daughters lead 
a more wearing life, in some ways. Besides be- 
ing the centre of a w^ell-ordered establishment, 
she took upon herself labors equal to those of 
any sister of charity, in watching over the sick, 
and was a true missionary of the Cross, striving 
daily to bring it home to old and young, and 
holding it up to the eyes of the dying among 
our people.” 

It w’as the first allusion Godwyn had heard 
to the character of Colonel Langdon’s late 
wife, and he was much struck with it. He ob- 
served that Mrs. Langdon’s eyes had filled with 
tears, and Isabel’s dilated with interest at this 
description of one who must have died w^hile 
the latter was still a little girl. Their mother, 
however worthy of this eulogy, could not, he 
thought, have led a more beautiful life than 
her daughters, nor so difficult a one in many 
ways. He could not, of course, make this com- 
ment aloud, but remarked : 

“ I cannot think, sir, that a more noble type 
of women has ever graced the earth than Car- 
olina had to show. But you must let me be- 
lieve that her future will not shame her past ; 
and I wish it could be said that the men had 


88 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


borne themselves as well through the present 
difficult time, as the women have done.” 

“ The next generation will not have the ad- 
vantages of education that these had,” said 
Colonel Langdon. “ There will be a deteriora- 
tion in manners, that must tell upon the char- 
acters of the women, as well as the men of the 
State.” 

“ There may be some compensation, you will 
allow, sir,” said Godwyn, “ in the opportunity 
difficult times afford for the exercise of certain 
virtues which can hardly be developed amid 
ordinary surroundings. The struggle against I 
them conduces to the discipline and expansion 
of the moral being.” 

“ It does, I grant you, in individuals. Some 
will rise to heights they would not have at- . 
tained under ordinary circumstances; but the ' 
thought of the extraordinary virtues which 
may be developed by a few, hardly consoles me 
in the prospect of the moral deterioration of 
the many.” 

“ But why. Colonel Langdon, since the high- j 
est virtues, in particular instances, may be the 
fruits of adversity — it being, as Lord Bacon 
says, the blessing of the New Testament, as 
prosperity is of the Old — should it not be ex- 
pected to prove beneficial to the character of 


Or Nepenthe. 89 

the whole people as well as to that of individ- 
uals?” 

“ The question resolves itself,” said Colonel 
Langdon, “ into how far we can go in arguing 
from the analogy which exists between nations 
and individuals.” 

“ I have been in the habit of considering this 
analogy as a very perfect one,” said Godwyn, 
“and believing that we could argue from it 
freely, arriving at as much certaint}’' in our 
conclusions as is ever attainable in this sort of 
reasoning — which is the only one the subject 
admits of, from its nature.” 

“ That is true. It is one of those questions 
on which we can only theorize.” 

“ But we may arrive at convictions.” 

“ I have not arrived at any/’ said Colonel 
Langdon ; “ but I would like to hear yours, and 
how you reached them.” 

“ The way was this,” said Godwyn : “ in gen- 
eral, it has been a favorite practice of mine to 
translate the axioms of one department of 
knowledge into the terms of another, and it is 
surprising what light this sometimes seems to 
throw upon difficult or disputed subjects ; thus 
once, when I was engaged in the composition 
of some essays on education, — ” 

“ They were published in that magazine 


00 


.4 Herd’s Last Days, 

which contained other contributions of yours, 
were they not ? I have some recollection of 
them.” 

“ Yes. It occurred to me that the principles 
I was trying to elucidate, might be found ap- 
plicable to governmental problems ; from that, 
the next step was to an examination of this 
analogy between states, considered as identical 
with their people, and individuals. I verified 
the harmony of their organizations to my own 
satisfaction, until it became established in my 
mind that the forms of national life were de- 
signed and called into being by the same cre- 
ative will that bestowed existence on human 
beings, that, as I believe the providence of the 
Supreme Disposer to be concerned in each in- 
dividual’s birth, circumstances and surround- 
ings in so far that nothing happens but by His 
allowance and that all is so arranged as, in the 
end, by a divine transmuting agency — the work 
of the Eternal Spirit co-operating with the 
human will — to work for the good and the high- 
est development of those who accept and use 
His grace, so do I believe the same providence 
to be concerned in the formation and destruc- 
tion of governments for the development of na- 
tions ; and that the scheme of things under 
which nations and individuals hold their beins: 

o 


Or Nepenthe. 


91 


is identical — in other words, that the Christian 
dispensation is intended for both. 

“As I told you,” said Colonel Langdon, “this 
is not the first time I have discussed this sub- 
ject. I had several conversations upon it with 
a friend whom I greatly revered. His views 
were essentially different from yours. For my 
own part, the arguments on this question appear 
to me fairly balanced; the subject only admits 
of probable evidence, and, in weighing the 
probabilities, I consider that not enough pre- 
ponderance exists on either side to justify the 
formation of a decided ojfinion. It may be 
that yon have some new arguments in favor of 
your theory to throw" into the scale; and I 
should like to understand the way in which 
you would meet the points wdiere the analogy 
fails, — as all analogies do, when pressed too far.” 

“ I should like to understand your friend’s 
view^s before entering upon the defence of my 
own. Colonel Langdon,” said Godwyn. “ I am 
really anxious to hear what can be said on the 
opposite side. I care nothing about maintain- 
ing my theor}^ in comparison with arriving at 
the truth about this question. It appears to 
me to be an exceedingly important one to 
those who desire to unite the acceptance of 
Christianity with the love of their country — 


92 


A Heroes Last Days, 

) 

whatever their opinions may be on other 
political points.” 

V ery true. It is quite aside, for instance, 
from all the issues between the North and the 
South which have led us into this discussion,” 
said Colonel Langdon. “I shall pi:eface my 
account by stating that I have always con- 
sidered this friend of mine* the superior of 
every other person I have ever been brought 
into contact with. If to adopt his opinions 
would have assimilated my character to his, 
I would have felt the temptation as a strong 
one. 

Colonel Langdon hereupon proceeded with 
the statement of his friend’s views, which will 
here be given without the breaks which oc- 
curred in the conversation, for the sake of 
succinctness. He had held that the revelation 
of Christianity, bringing “ immortality to 
light,” and thereby immeasurably exalting the . 
dignity of individual members of the human 
race, did away with the former dispensation, 
under which there was a recognized continuity 


*The writer wishes to state that the Hon. R. W. 
Barnwell is here referred to. The resume of his opinions, 
as here given — though not the personal reference — was 
prepared in 1874, and, on its being submitted to him, he 
pronounced it an exact representation of his opinions. 


Or Nepenthe. 93 

of national life, and, the sins of the fathers 
being visited on the children, whole peoples 
were made the objects of visible judgments ; 
that, accordingly, the endeavor to “ track the 
footprints ” of God in the course of subsequent 
history, is a vain one, if we attempt to draw 
from it other conclusions than this, that the 
principles of Christianity are being proved 
sufficient to sustain the souls of individuals 
through all the almost infinite modes of pro- 
bation furnished by the conditions of ancient 
and modern life with their changing struc- 
tures of society. These principles did, indeed, 
embody the remedy for the disorders of the 
world ; but the way in which they fulfilled 
their mission was, not by gradually permeating 
the institutions of society, but by rescuing 
individuals from the various evils and tempta- 
tions — though not from the troubles — which 
must be incident to all possible phases of mor- 
tal life. The consummation towards which 
the course of the world was tending, Vas not 
the “ golden year ” of the poets, but the final 
condemnation and rejection of all existing 
forms of government, as of systems proven 
failures — for no scheme had yet been, or, he 
believed, would ever be framed by man, which 
could be styled good in other than a compara- 


94 


.1 Herd’s Last Days, 


tive sense — the destruction of all present forms 
of national life, and, probably, of the entire 
present scheme of things, preparatory to a new 
creation and the introduction of a better order. 

Godwyn asked how this theory accounted 
for the history of the Jews in modern times. i 

“ He considered theirs as an exceptional 
case,” said Colonel Langdon, “ as a standing [ 
miracle, bearing witness to the truth of Chris- ( 
tianity. It appeared as if, on account of their j 
rejection of it, the Jews were being still kept in 
subjection to the old dispensation, which had - 
been abrogated for the rest of the human race.” 

“Still, the sequences existing between peri-' 
ods of national life and connecting different 
generations together, appear to me equally 
obvious and undeniable in other cases,” said j 
Godwyn. “ Take the occurrences of the French 
revolution, following on an age of dissolute , 
manners and infidelity.” 

“ He denied the inference that other nations 
escaped similar visitations because less de- 
serving of them, or because equally deep-seated , 
diseases were not inherent in their bodies politic, 
ready to break forth at any time. Such events } 
were to be considered as the forerunners of the ' 
final doom of all nations, though the world ' 
in general was not yet made the theatre of that 


95 


! Or Nepenthe. 

'kind of judgment which involves the idea of 
' penalty as an absolutely unavoidable natural 
, consec^uence of wrong doing. 

“And w^hy not ? ” said Godwyn. “ Is it not 
only because, from our belief in the sufficiency 
, of the atonement of a divine Saviour, suffering, 
even where it does come by way of natural 
consequence, has come to be regarded as intend- 
I ed chiefly for our improvement ? The point 
at issue between your friend’s opinions and 
‘ mine seems to me to narrow itself down to the 
^question: did Christ bear the sins of humanity 
collectively and as divided into separate races 
^and nationalities, or not?” 

“ I think that is a fair statement of the issue,” 
said Colonel Langdon. “ I confess your view 
would seem to add grandeur to the idea of 
^atonement ; but our ideas of grandeur are not 
a criterion of the truth of things. Your theory 
undoubtedly presents superior attractions, but 
that ought not to destroy the balance of our 
judgment; the very fact that there would he 
a pfedisposition in many minds to accept it, in 
preference to the other, ought to make us scru- 
I tinize it very closely.”” 

“ Yet, supposing other arguments for and 
against the acceptance of either of two theories 
to be equally balanced,” said Godwyn, “ it is 


96 


A Hero’s Last Hays, 

K ' 

sureh" not unreasonable to prefer the one which 
best answers to the needs of our nature by 
holding out the motive power of high hopes. 
Is it not a positive argument in its favor that 
it produces a bracing effect on the mind ?” 

“ It may be,” said Colonel Langdon, “just as* 
I hold it for a good argument in favor of a 
creed, that, admitting there Avas as much reason- 
ableness in rejecting as in accepting it, 3^et that ' 
certain advantages, should it prove true, would 
accrue to its believers, while, if it proved un- 
true, the}^ would merely stand on the sam^f 
footing as others. I have never thought tha|i 
problem in religion, the uniting, continued ex-' 
ertions, with acquiescence in disappointments, 
was best solved by the mystics, who held that to 
be able to dispense with hope was a sign c^l 
progress in the soul.” 

“ It is Wordsworth,” said Godwyn, “ who 
calls hope ‘ the paramount duty that Heaven 
lays, for its own honor, on man’s suffering : 
heart.’ ” 

“ Observe : my friend’s views do not dispense ! 
with hope altogether ; but he thought we could ' 
only exercise it reasonably in behalf of individ-' 
uals — at least that we Avere only justified in be-- • 
lieving that things Avould work to a happy coni ^ 
summation in regard to them.” 


97 


Or Nepenthe. 

-li “ Such views, it seems to me,” said Godwyii, 
y “ would discourage the feeling of patriotism, 
ijand I do not see how any one holding them 
ati could interest himself in public affairs.” 

I think not inconsistently,” answered Colo- 
asi^nel Langdon. “Although the relationship which 
a we bear to a certain country in our present 
1- form of being, is but temporary, it may entail 
4 certain duties; and to regard the forms of 
il national life and all the schemes of govern- 
1- ment which may be devised under our pres- 
ident order as doomed to destruction, is not 
i''^e same as believing that such schemes are all 
i^’equally bad, or that to further their better con- 
struction might not be a part of our duty. No 
doubt, it is desirable for the generations of 
men that governments should be well consti- 
'^uted, just as it is that individuals should have 
^ ^well-built houses. As a matter of fact, my friend’s 
\ opinions did not prevent him from making the 
[ most patriotic sacrifices in behalf of the South , 
though he was at no time sanguine as to the 
! success of the Confederacy. He considered 
Calhoun’s theory— he, by the way, was his 
intimate friend — to be founded on a correct es- 
timate of human nature, and the most perfect 
\jever imagined; yet that a government thor- 
oughly organized upon the basis of that theory 


\ 

98 A Hero's Last Days, } 

would ever be permitted to be established, or 
if established, long maintained, be thought 
improbable ; it may be he thought that, under 
the restraints so complete a system of adjust- 
ments would impose upon men, their true char- 
acters would have less opportunity to display 
themselves, and the purposes of probation be 
less fully answered than it otherwise would be.” 

“ Did he regard probation as the sole end of 
life?” 

“ As the primary end, undoubtedly. You, I,, 
perceive, look upon the present more as a scene^ 
of discipline and development; here we apf; 
proach the point of essential difference between 
your reading of the bearing of events and his.”| 
“ My theory does not exclude the idea of| 
probation,” said Godwyn ; “ and I do not se^ 
why the purpose of probation should not be, 
answered under well-constituted governments, 
if the standard by which men are to be judged 
is to be raised, as we are led to expect, in pro- 1 
portion to the advantages they enjoyed.” i 

“ I confess I do not see why not,” said Colonel 
Langdon ; “ therefore, I did not think his views i 
quite justified his forebodings of the failure of 
the Confederacy ; yet I could not help regard- , 
ing the event as a sort of confirmation of his^ 
judgment.” 


Or Nepenthe. 


99 


j “ But why should it be supposed,” said God- 
■i wyn, “ that, in enduring the probation to which 
.1 they are subjected, besides manifesting their 
, ' characters, roen may not attain to the highest 
development possible to them under their pres- 
,fent conditions? It seems to me that we must 
believe this, if we believe in a faithful Cre- 
ator.” 

“ I do not know that it is necessary to vindi- 
j cate the faithfulness of the Creator that we 
a should believe more than that men will be 
granted in eternity, as a reward in case of hav- 
^j^ng stood their probation here well, that devel- 
d opment of moral character which is the highest 
reward of well-doing.” 

“ Observe, Colonel Langdon, I said under 
their present conditions. It is not to be de- 
manded, of course, that the whole scheme of 
things should be so arranged as to admit of 
each individual’s reaching what might be pos- 
sible under a different order.” 

“ It would be impossible to prove that any 
one individual had actually reached the highest 
development he was capable of, or to show that 
he had had opportunity for doing so.” 

“As we agreed, these are not subjects which 
admit of absolute demonstration,” said God- 
wyn ; “ I only hope to prove that my theory 


100 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


{ 

I 


has more to be said in its favour than the con- 
trary one has.” 

“ Of two hypotheses, one may have more to 
be said in its favor, and yet may be more open 
to objections than the other,” said Colonel 
Langdon. “ Now, there are several against 
yours, which must be met before I can accept 
it. We have not as yet touched upon the points 
where the analogy between individuals and 
nations fails, even if it w^ere granted that this 
life is as much a scene of development as of 
probation. As I told you, I could never quite 
accept my friend’s conclusions; they lefttoo^j 
much to be accounted for ; his negations ap- ' 
peared to me excessive.” 

“ I cannot but think that, in denying that | 
events have any other bearing than the mani-v 
festation of individual character, he argued'^ 
against the force of facts,” said Godwyn. ' i 

“ He did not deny that there might be 
others,” said Colonel Langdon ; but considered ^ 
that they were beyond our comprehension, the 
relation between causes and effects being too | 
obscure for us to draw just inferences in such ’ 
matters.” 

“ creed, you will observe. Colonel Langdon, ; : 
embraces all the points of his, — only a few more. ' t) 
I only object to his not going far enough.” 


Or Nepenthe. 101 

“ Well, I shall be interested in hearing what 
I you have to say.” 

j At this point the conversation was inter- 
rupted by sounds that betokened the return of 

( John Langdon from a hunt. He was calling 
for Godwyn to come and listen to the per- 
formances of his setter, which he had under- 
j taken to train, finding her education unduly 
' neglected, and Colonel Langdon was too old a 
I sportsman not to feel quite an equal interest in 
1 the subject. 

I The difference between the two sisters had 
j;} been very observable in the different amount 
1. of attention they had accorded to this long 
talk. Mrs. Langdon had quietly gone on work- 
ing, her interest only seeming to have been 
) roused once, at the allusion to her mother. 

“ She is the same sort of woman as Arte- 
velde’s Adriana,” thought Godwyn : 

“ Unmoved 

Amidst the world’s contentions, if they touched 
No vital chord, nor injured what she loved.” 

In truth she only cared deeply for persons. 
Its effect upon her father's spirits was the chief 
cause of her regret for the state of the country. 

Isabel’s attention, on the contrary, had been 
absorbed from the beginning. She had set out 


102 


A Heroes Last Days, 


with a conviction that her father’s position 
would prove impregnable, and bent her powers 
to following tlie argument^ rather in the hope 
of arriving at a clear comprehension of what 
he thought, than as expecting Godwyn to jus- 
tify his more hopeful views of things ; but 
gradually she had become inclined to adopt his 
theory, and hope that he might be able to con- 
vert her father to it. 


CHAPTER VI. 

“ Love thou thy land with love far brc 
From out the storied Past, and used 
Within the Present, but transfused 
Thro’ future times by power of thouglu. 

* . * * * * * 

For Nature also, cold and warm. 

And moist and dry, devising long. 

Thro’ many agents making strong. 

Matures the individual form. 

Meet is it changes should control 
Our being, lest we rust in ease. 

We all are changed by slow degrees, 

All but the basis of the soul. 

So let the change which comes be free 
To ingroove itself.” 

[Tknn 

“ If you will find those essays of our young i 
friend on education, Isabel, I should like to ; 

i 



l'SON. 


0\' Nepenthe. 


103 


i| hear them read over,” said her father, early on 
J the following morning, when she was about to 
", begin her usual reading. 

1 They were not, on this occasion, interrupted 
f by Mr. Godwyn, and the essays were read 
4|( through. 

There were four; the first was headed “ Gen- 
- eral Beneficial Principles in Education the 
\ second, “ Upon tlie Amount of Consideration 
due to Individuality in Education the third, 
6 “ Repression and Expansion the fourth, ‘‘ A 

■ Harmonious Development as the Chief End in 
Education.” 

Omitting the reasoning by which Godwyn 
arrived at his conclusions, only the latter will 
( be given here. 

It was maintained that the true end of edu- 
^ cation was to establish and uphold the princi- 
‘ ' pies of a divine order by a harmonious devel- 
opment of the physical, the intellectual and 
I the moral nature ; that all three ought to be 
f| subjected to strictly analogous treatment ; that, 
i; as in the operations of the order of nature the 
, principle of life is first presented to us through 
f the workings of a physical medium, through 
the unfolding of which our knowledge of the 
)l mental and moral traits of the individual 
is derived, so our theories in regard to the 


104 


A Heroes Last Days, 


parts of the complex being of man should be 
formed from analogies with the manifestations 
of his material existence, and verified by com- 
parison with its workings ; that we may, there- 
fore, argue from what is admitted as beneficial 
to corporeal development up to principles that 
should regulate our treatment of the more 
spiritual half of the being. The work of the 
educator was entirely distinct from that of the 
Creator, but should be co-operative and co- 
ordinate to it ; it was the part of the educator 
to bring out and train the faculties, not to call 
them into being— in the effort to do which, 
much vain labor was expended. To each in- 
dividual, certain capacities belonged, existing 
in the infant as germs, dependent for develop- 
ment upon his surroundings ; these capacities 
were distributed with differences as to number, 
degree and combination of almost infinite com- 
plexity ; whence arose endless natural varieties 
of outward and inward dissimilarities between 
individuals, and an inherent uniqueness, essen- 
tial to the nature of each individual ; these 
differences were not to be confounded with the 
results of the action of circumstances in de- 
veloping the nature, which, however, tended to 
increase and mark the unlikeness of individu- 
als to each other. Germs of intellectual faults 


105 


j Or Nepenthe. 

\ and tendencies to moral evil, analogous to phy- 
sical deformities, and moral deficiencies, akin 
I to physical, were also inherent in every man’s 
I nature ; hence the work of the educator was 
two-fold, and should be directed to the expan- 
^^sion of the one set of germs and the repression 
of the other — analogous with the efforts of gov- 
ernment to put down crime, at the same time 
that it fosters civilizing agencies ; but since 
j man’s double nature was thus at war with itself, 

I an absolutely harmonious, faultless develop- 
f ment of the being was not to be looked for as 
|i|he result of education ; the utmost was sucli 

i !4n approximation to it as that the higher should 
'predominate over the lower nature in him. 
The range of possibilities of development open 
to any individual, from the imperfect or dis- 
proportionate expansion of his capacities, was 
^ery wide ; but there was only one perfect ideal 
development — perfect that is, with the perfec- 
tion of a creature, perfectness of its kind as dis- 
tinguished from absolute perfection — for the 
nature of any man ; this ideal, because of the 
unequal distribution of capacities, was separate 
‘and unique in the case of each ; the education 
should be directed towards an approximation 

\ it- 

The work of education was much more ar- 


106 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


duous in the case of some individuals than of 
others; it was more difficult to overcome the 
natural defects of some persons so that they 
should not become criminals, than \o help others 
to become shining characters. For the treat- 
ment of such cases, peculiar remedial mental 
and moral agencies had to he resorted to, and 
for their success it was important that the pos- 
sibilit}^ of the attainmentt)f at least an approach 
to the perfect ideal of the character, should ' 
never be lost sight of. Here Coleridge’s noble ^ 
poem on education was quoted from, to illus- I 
trate the importance of maintaining hope. Ji 

For tliose who had to deal with unusually' ; 
vicious natures, there was this encouragement;' 
that, by a special law of compensation, this j 
tendency being once overcome, such natures 
were often susceptible of an approximation to 
a loftier ideal than might be approached by^ 
ordinary individuals, free from such natural 
bias in the wrong direction. 

Two direct quotations may close the account 
of tliese essays. 

“ The work of the educator bears some re- 
semblance to that of a sculptor who carves 
what images he chooses, limited by the amount 
of his skill and the material upon which he isi| 
working, or of the artist who draws what he Avill, 


Or Nepenthe. 


107 


under the same limitations. It has many more 
'resemblances to that of a gardener to whose 
' care is committed a plant of whose particular 
nature he is partly ignorant ; he must, there- 
fore, also be ignorant of even the. probal>le re- 
suits of his tendance of it; he should take care 
that it be supplied with wliat lie knows to he 
• good for plants in general, until observation 
i shows the sort of treatment under which it 
I thrives, not attempting to force it into arbitrary 
5 shapes, or even being over- hasty to remove 
■ Nvhatmay appear to him to be excrescences, 
i^ut may prove to be essential and even pecu- 
liarly beautiful parts of the being. But there 
ijis a point where the analogy between the work 
3 of the gardener and that of the educator also 
; fails; only two wills are factors in the result in 
o| ^he one case, that of the original designer and 
l^hat of the developer ; but man is a conscious, 
[\; a reasoning, a self-willed and in ii. measure self- 
' responsible being ; without co-operation from 
itl himself, the most intelligent efforts of another 
t for his improvement can produce comparatively 
J little result; for a happy result, it is as neces- 
feary that the will of the subject of education 
should conform itself to the design of the edu- 
1 Lfjator, as that the latter should conform itself to 
pthe design of the creator.' The greatest proh- 


108 A Hero’s Last Days, 

lem in the work of education really is the gain-^ 
ing of the thorough assent and co-operation of 
the subject. In the fret and friction of clash- 
ing wills much force is Avasted.” 

“ It seems to be a common mistake of earnest 
minded persons, to direct their energies toAvards f 
the rejArcssion of unfortunate tendencies in 
their charges, rather than to the expansion of 
higher ones, whereas it is very often the less 
essential part of their tasks. The divine cau- 
tion agamst pulling up the tares lest the wheat , 
be rooted up also, seems applicable here. Some^ 
guardians of youth practice upon the moral ^ 
nature of their charges a system analogous to \ 
the counse of a parent, Avho, to remedy a defec- J 
tive complexion should deprive a child of the | 
benefits of open air exercise; according tO| 
the strength of the aauII of the subject acted! ; 
upon, the natural consequences of such treat- 
ment are either a general Aveakness of character, 
or a rebound in the future towards the opposite ,j 
direction, like the recoil of a spring. As is the j 
case in the providential ordering of affairs, a i 
certain measure of freedom should be allow’ ed^|( 
to the Avill of the subject of education ; Ave i 
should respect that mysterious agency, the t 
human wdll, as its creator has chosen to respeclKjl 
it ; discipline is allowable only to a certaim v 


109 


Or Nepenthe. 

,'l^point ; the absolute forcing of the will is dan- 
' gerous ; to destroy its strength is an awful in- 
' jury to the character ; to induce the habit of 
its resolute submission to the claims of duty is 
the greatest benefit that can be conferred.” 

On the' afternoon of the day on wdnch Isabel 
had read these essays to her father, Godwyn 
was playing a game of chess with his little 
friend, Una, in the Pinery, which was one of 
I the favorite family resorts. It was situated 

i only a few yards from the house, and consisted 
of a grove of over a hundred trees of the blue 
lupine species, planted in rows. Within an outer 
curtain of dense foliage, the effect produced by 
the smooth, round trunks of the trees, rising 
! at regular intervals and bare up to about ten 
, feet from the ground, by the interlacing of the 
I dry branches overhead, — for the thick foliage 
y at the top and sides of t^ie grove prevented the 
light from reaching the inner boughs and 
) gradually left them perfectly bare, — by the long 
3 perspectives and by the soft, subdued light, was 
1 very similar to that of the arched aisles of a 
I cathedral. The ground was covered, some 
3 inches deep, by long years’ deposits of the 
e trees; the topmost layer of the pine-needles 
1 ^ 1 ' having fallen recently, retained, at this time, a 
yellow-brown color and a polish like a waxed 
4 


1 


no 


A Herd’s Last Days, 




floor, but was more springy than a thick velvet 
carpet under foot. Rustic seats and tables had 
been placed, here and there, close to the trees, ' 
so as not to interrupt Colonel Langdon’s free 
passage between the rows, where he would - 
sometimes walk without assistance, except from ^ 
his stick. Coming hither with Isabel, this 
afternoon, and learning how Godwyn was em- j; 
plo^^ed, he smiled and said : 

When you are through with your game, I 
want to pursue our discussion of yesterday.” 

Isabel offered to take the game off his hands . : 
and Una prettily gave in to the arrangement; J; 
Godwyn therefore paced up and down the^' 
grove with Colonel Langdon, while she divided! 
her attention between the chess board and whati 
was passing between the two gentlemen. 1 

“ I have been much interested in hearing | 
your essays read over,” said Colonel Langdon, I' 
“and applying your theories, as you suggested 
might be done, to governmental affairs, by sup-f 
posing the words educator and subject ex-| 
changed for executive, or ruling power, and | 
people. It is certain that the same principles ^ 
apply very well to their several relations and 
duties towards each other. I was particularly^ 
struck with the happiness with which yourll 
quotation from Coleridge, as to the necessity of| 


Ill 


IP Or Nepenthe. 

T 

I ^ keeping up hope, would apply to your view of 
^ our duty to the State.” 

*' “ Nearly the whole of that poem is equally 

j applicable, I think, to the attitude a patriot 
should endeavor to maintain towards his coun- 
A, try,” said Godwyn, I can repeat it, if you 
care to .listen to it, in this connection.” 
j Upon Colonel Langdon’s assenting, he did 
^ so, leaving out only the introductory oft-quoted 
lines: 






‘ i 


“ For as old Atlas on his broad neck places 
Heaven’s starry globe, and there supports it so 
Do these upbear the little world below 
Of Education, Patience, Love and Hope. 

Methinks I see them, grouped in seemly show, 

Their straightened arms upraised, their palms aslope, 
And robes that, mingling as adown they flow, 

Distinctly blend, like snow embossed in snow 
Oh, part them never ! If Hope prostrate lie. 

Love too must sink and die. 

But Love- is patient and doth proof derive 
From her own life, that Hope is yet alive, 

And, bending o’er with soul-transfusing eyes, 

And the soft murmurs of the mother-dove. 

Calls back the fleeting spirit, and half sui)plies; 

Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Love. 
Yet, haply, there will come a weary day 
When, over-tasked at length. 

Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way ; 

Then, with a statue’s smile, a statue’s strength. 

Stands the mute sister. Patience, nothing loth. 

And, both supporting, does the work of both. 


112 


J Hero's Last Days, 


* 

\ 


Godwyn’s tendency to stammer rendered 
him liable to frequent unexpected pauses in re- 
peating, which did not, upon the whole, make 
his manner less impressive. 

“ I can only repeat,” said Colonel Langdon, 
when he had finished, “ that your faith is a 
beautiful and attractive one. But that weary j 
day has certainly come for me in which pa- i 
tience can be my only support in regard to the 
country.” I 

“ Love and Hope must revive, sir, if Patience 
hold out beneath the load.” I 

“ Not for me ; not in my day,” said the blind 
man sadly. j 

“ Can we not look beyond it? ” said Godwyn. ! 
Colonel Langdon making no reply, he pres- 
ently -said : 

“ I have been occupied, during the last two , 
days, in studying some of those sermons of 
Bishop Butler, to which you directed my at- 
tention. Not only are his views on govern- 
ment interesting, but his review of the moral 
constitution of man may be made to bear upon 
national forms of life. What he says as to the , 
disorder of our nature, in reference to the 
faculty of conscience, wdiich is the highest we 
have and should dominate over the others, but ' 
is one of the least self-asserting in reality, is 


Or Nepenthe. 1 13 

very strikingly true when applied to the body 
politic/’ • 

“But here comes up one of the points in 
which I consider the analogy between nations 
and individuals fails very much,” said Colonel 
Langdon. 

He then brought forward the amount of 
truth that is felt to lie in the saying, “ corpora- 
tions have no souls.” The fact was, the vitality 
of a nation’s existence was vaguely distributed 
among a host of individuals, passing from one 
generation to another; and though such ex- 
pressions as “ the moral sense of the com- 
munity,” “ the public standard of right,” &c., 
implied a sort of national moral responsibility, 
they hardly answered to the defined idea of 
conscience which rendered individuals respon- 
sible. Occasionally, indeed, masses of men 
combined in one action, for which they might 
all be held responsible; but, in the general 
conduct of affairs, it was hard to say that a 
whole people usually were so, or to abstract 
even one sentiment from their collective opin- 
ions which might be considered to represent 
the real “ moral sense of the community ” on 
very important matters, in regard to which ac- 
tion was continually taken in the name of the 
commonwealth, for which it could not fairly he 
held responsible. 


114 A Heroes Last DayS^ 

Godwyn said that the natural leaders of 
thought on moral questions represented the 
faculty of conscience in a State. It would 
help to clear the analogy between States and 
individuals of vagueness, if it were continually 
borne in mind that the different parts of the 
physical, mental and moral constitution of 
man were represented in the State by distinct 
classes, each of which owed quite different 
duties to the commonwealth, as was recognized 
in the old, homely fable of Menenius. Each 
class might justly be held accountable for non- 
performance of its peculiar duties, or for in- 
terfering with the functions, or refusal to 
admit the just claims of another class; but 
individuals,^ though joining in a common act, 
were to be relegated to their proper classes, 
all not being responsible in the same way, and 
the whole community being only responsible in 
so far as it ratified and accepted the decision 
of those who acted in its name, as its repre- 
sentatives. In all communities, those of higher 
moral culture than the generality, capable of 
founding well-grounded opinions on questions 
of political morality, must be comparatively 
few ; however little their office and its import- 
ance were recognized by themselves or others, 
these were the true representatives of the con- 


Or Nepenthe. 


115 


science of the community, and their decisions, 
the true moral sense of the community, 
whether accepted and acted on by the people 
at large, or not. He believed such men to be in 
duty bound to some expression of their opinions 
on subjects belonging to their province, and 
that other classes should properly be held ac- 
countable for refusal to conform to those de- 
cisions. 

“ You surely would not assert,” said Colonel 
Langdon, “ that it is the duty of all classes to 
accept and ratify the decision of one class 
without scrutiny.” 

Godwyn answered that that was by no means 
his meaning ; that that would be advocating 
an intolerable form of moral slavery, involv- 
ing the surrender of personal responsibility, 
often to the dictatorship of one man, since, in 
many instances, it was not even a class, but a 
single voice which directed the political con- 
victions of a whole people, in regard to matters 
not generally understood. It might often be 
the duty of an individual to jtrotest against 
the decisions of those who had been accepted 
as the natural guides of the community, and 
to uphold a higher standard of action; such 
protest was to be regarded merely as an asser- 
tiop — which might or might not be well- 


116 


A Heroes Last Days, 


founded — of that individual’s being a truer 
representative, in regard to the question at 
issue, of the faculty of conscience in the social 
constitution, than those who had acted hitherto 
as its exponents. It was not to be . forgotten 
that all classes were divided in themselves 
among the virtuous and the immoral — answer- 
ing to the facts relating to the double moral 
constitution of the individual man — and the 
class of those fitted to form a judgment on the 
moral bearing of national actions, not less so 
than others. Then, though the voice of the 
conscience be not uncertain, it is easily stifled. 
In actual fact, some of the proper guardians 
of the moral sense of a community often 
ranged themselves, doubtless, contrary to their 
convictions, while others failed in their duty 
of asserting it from not recognizing their re- 
sponsibilities. Among a people wliose govern- 
ment was badly organized, the true exponents 
of the national conscience might even be found 
holding aloof from public affairs on principle, 
without any. consciousness of their true voca- 
tion. ^ Godwyn believed, however, that persons 
or a person existed in every commonwealth to 
whom that office — as in Eunyan’s quaint ac- 
count of Mr. Eecorder’s right position in the 
town of Mansoul — was due, by divine right. 


117 


Or Nepenthe. 

“ You mean, naturally occupying in politics 
the position towards the State, of prophets 
among the ancient Jews,” observed Colonel 
Langdon. 

“ Yes,” said Godwyn ; “ but in modern times 
there are very few instances of their being con- 
scious of their office. I think I could indicate 
individuals who, having left on record their 
enlightened convictions, would appear to have 
been the exponents of the national conscience 
of the English. That is not to say that they 
were all faithful to their duty. I will mention 
a few that I feel most confident about : Lord 
Bacon, Milton, Bishop Butler — I should not 
have thought of him before reading these re- 
mains of his — Locke, Dr. Johnson, Burke, the 
poet Wordsworth, Prince Albert, too, I think — 
though not English born! Shakespeare seems, 
in his historic plays, to indicate generally an 
individual who Avas, to the England of his day, 
‘ as is the conscience of a saint amid his w^ar- 
ring members.’ ” 

“ If there is truth in your idea,” ‘said Colonel 
Langdon, ‘‘ I have been thinking I could lay 
my finger on the man who occupies that posi- 
tion in South Carolina to-day,* at least the 


*At present it would not be so easy as in 1870 to say 
upon whom that prophet-mantle rests, 


man who, on a question of political action, 
could best be trusted to decide what was right.” 

He then admitted that such a theory as God- 
wyn’s, if generally accepted, would tend to in- 
crease the sense of definite responsibilities in 
the exercise of civil rights — a most desirable 
consummation, since in this country men had 
been too much disposed to consider rights as 
separate from duties. He also admitted that 
what Godwyn had said as to the manner in 
which classes, and even individuals, might be 
considered as corresponding to different facul- 
ties, exercising different functions, in the per- 
sonality of a State, was an answer to several 
objections against this theory, besides the one j 
he had urged. -■ 

“'Yet,” said he, “there is another failure in J 
the analogy between individuals and nations, : 
which is also embodied in that saying, ‘ corpo- > 
rations have no souls ; ’ it is the finite existence 
of the one, compared with the immortal dura- ^ 
tion which, if we accept the Christian faith, | 
we assign to the other. True, as you remarked ? 
once before, the State, as identified with the | 
people, is longer lived than as identified with' | 
the form of government. Still, its existence, J 
like that of the earth-spirits in German folk- 1 
lore, is bounded, at most, by some hundreds of 1 


Or Nepenthe. 110 

years, — it terminates with the present scheme 
of things.” 

“Why should we presume that?” said God- 
wyn. “ The subject, of course, admits of no 
proof ; but why may there not be a resurrec- 
tion of nations in the world beyond this ? — of 
nations purified from the taint of evil, realizing 
the perfection of their ideal being, so that — 
while all that is narrowing in the earthly senti- 
ment of patriotism is done away — scope may 
still be allowed for the exercise of that noble 
virtue ? ” 

“ Scope will be allowed,” said Colonel Lang- 
don ; “ but our allegiance will be transferred to 
a new and better country.” 

“ May not the old sentiment be incorporated 
into the new ? ” asked Godwyn. “ What part of 
our nature is it that makes the strongest appeal 
for immortality ? Is it not the affections? The 
idea of the recognition of those dear to us, is in- 
separable from that of continued existence ; we 
do . violence to our instincts in attempting to 
part them, — ‘ whatever dies, love lives, I feel 
and know;’ but our country is more to some 
of us than a beloved friend.” 

“ The power of loying will live in us, doubt- 
less,” said Colonel Langdon ; “ but that it will 
spend itself on the same objects, we have no 


120 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


positive ground for hoping, and, indeed, except 
in exceptional cases, I know not if it be even 
desirable. We are leaving the domain of rea- 
son for that of speculation here ; and revelation 
gives us nothing positive on these points.” 

‘‘ There is a prediction,” said Godwyn, “ that 
the kingdoms of the world shall become the king- 
doms of Our Lord and of His Christ, and another 
that the nations of them that are saved shall 
walk in the light of the prophetic city of God.” 

“ Those passages may be interpreted differ- 
ently,” said Colonel Langdon. 

“ The author of the universe,” said Godwyn, 
“ in unfolding new forms of life in the progress 
of creation, seems to work by the further devel- 
opment of already existing Gq^es, rather than 
by the construction of new. If the universe be 
all consistent with itself — as we must suppose 
the most reasonable conjecture — then the same 
method of advance must characterize the new 
and spiritualized order of things upon which 
we enter at death. . It seems as if nothing really 
good could be permitted to be lost ; it must find 
a place in that n^w order ; there must be 

‘ A second birth 

For all that is most perfect upon earth — 

Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there 
In happier beauty — ’ 


Or Nepmthe. 


121 


and it is my hope that a brotherhood of na- 
tional ties — even those which have become en- 
deared to us in this incomplete mode of our 
being — may be among the things found worthy 
to survive the present economy.” 

“ I must consider it unlikely,” said Colonel 
Langdon, that any but purely spiritual rela- 
tions will be continued in another life.” 

■ Godwyn maintained that all natural relations 
had their spiritual side ; that they admitted of 
being spiritualized, and, if so, might partake of 
immortality ; it was not unreasonable, but 
natural, to expect their further development 
beyond the grave; and the ties that linked 
together in national life on earth, individuals 
who were to partake of immortality, might be 
found as worthy to survive in them as any 
other relationship into which they had been 
brought on earth. 

“ I admit to you,” said Colonel Langdon, 
“ that there may be an antecedent probability, 
if the analogy between nations and individuals 
be found perfect in other respects, that it will 
not fail in this. It amounts to no more than 
a possibility — still it destroys the force of some 
objections against your theory. There are 
others which I have not yet urged.” 

He would have proceeded to do so, but the 


122 


A Ilerc/s Last Days, 


coolness of the night-fall was beginning to make 
itself felt, and broke off their conversation hy 
driving them into the house, where, around the 
hall-fire, as usual at this time of the evening, 
the child-element of the household was assert- 
ing itself, supreme for the time. 


CHAPTER VIE 

“ Given back to life, to life indeed, thro’ thee, 
Indeed I love ; the new day comes, the light 
Dearer for night. — 

My doubts are dead, 

My haunting sense of hollow shows: — 

Dear, 

Look up and let thy nature strike on mine. 

Like yond.er morning on the blind half-world : 
Approach and fear not; breathe upon my brows; 
In that fine air I tremble, all the past 
Melts mist-like into tins bright hour.” 

[Tennyson's “ Pktncess.” 

Godwyn had hitherto had no direct opportu- 
nities of informing Isabel of his sentiments, 
or of arriving at hers, upon other topics than 
those towards which his conversatipiis with her 
father had been directed ; but, the day after 
the last related conversation, the little girls 
proposed his accompanying them to the top of 


123 


Or Neimithe. 

one of the heights behind the house, which 
they had honored with the name of Isabel’s 
Alp, and Isabel consented to make one of the 
party, — thus giving him a chance of conversa- 
tion which he had long desired. 

After, perhaps, a quarter of an hour’s climb- 
ing, they reached one of those huge, bare rocks 
which are found, here and there, as if to afford 
an unobstructed view for the special convenience 
of sight-seers, in the midst of the close woods 
that, for the most part, cover these mountains. 
All found seats and rested some minutes in si- 
lence, contemplating the scene spread out be- 
fore them. 

The sun was still at some distance above the 
horizon ; but his rays, seemingly to strike the 
higher mountains from a level, brought out in 
rich relief the autumnal crimson and gold of 
the trees upon the nearer heights, and bathed 
the more distant in purple and pink glories ; it 
was one of those rare transfigurations of nature 
w^hich fill those who are thoroughly accus- 
tomed to mountain scenery with as deep aston- 
ishment and delight as those to whom it has 
before been unknown. But the intense beauty 
of such sights soon becomes almost oppressive 
to all but those who possess souls long cultured 
in the higher reverences. Children — even 


124 


A Heroes Last Days, 


those gifted with high imaginative powers — 
are apt to grow restless under such mysteriously 
solemn revelations of loveliness; thus Una 
presently manifested an inclination to shake 
off the spell of silence which had fallen upon 
them all. She made a proposition, which it 
would have been as childish to resent as to 
make, that they should see who could throw 
stones farthest down to the bottom of the rock. 
Godwyn and Isabel not following up this amuse- 
ment with the ardor she desired, she suggested 
another diversion— that they should leave this 
place and go to a certain little cave, not far off, 
from which no view, she admitted, but a splen- 
did echo, was to be had. Neither of the two, 
however, were to be persuaded into this expe- 
dition, and Una at length set off on it with only 
her ever-faithful Amy en attendance, rather 
piqued at the non-attendance of Alfred — for so 
she as well as all the rest of the family, with the 
exception of Isabel, had now learned to call 
him — with her wishes. 

Left alone, the two sat for some time in si- 
lence, — Isabel, absorbed in the beautiful and , 
continually changing effects of the waning sun- 
light, Godwyn in the consciousness of being, 
for the first time, alone with her. Yet he could < 
not be insensible to what was going on around 


Or Nepenthe. 125 

* 

him. He quite understood that the frankly 
sweet, momentary glances which she responded 
to the looks he directed tow^ards her, were her 
answers to w^hat she understood as appeals for 
sympathy in bis admiration ; but he found this 
conversation of the eyes sufficiently pleasant 
to have been wdlling to let it continue indefi- 
nitely, without recourse to words. It was she 
who at length broke the silence. 

“ Is not all this wonderful ?” she said. “ One 
scarcely feels that it is real, but as if in the 
midst of a dream.” 

“ I rather feel as if it might be a glimpse into 
what is more real than life, no dream,” he 
went on vaguely — “ after all, sometimes I think 
dreams are the most real things in life. Of 
course there are dreams and dreams — those 
that must fade, and those that must grow into 
reality, if one is earnest enough in dreaming.” 

“ You remind me of a speech I heard papa 
make about philosophers ; they are called dream- 
ers until it is proved that they have dreamed to 
good purpose ; and it is not always easy to dis- 
tinguish them from mere visionaries.” 

“ It is too much to expect,” said Godwyn, 
“ that the world should respect and believe in 
any man’s dreams before they have realized 
themselves. AVhy should he expect it, when 


126 A Heroes Lad 

it is sometimes difficult for liim to keep his 
own faith in them ? ” 

“ But you never lose yours, do you ? ” 

“ One gets out of heart at times/’ he said. 
He spoke in a dejected tone, unusual with him ; 
struck suddenly with a more than usual sense 
of Isabel’s extraordinary loveliness, it seemed 
impossible that she could ever consent to be 
his; if this new vision were to fail of realiza- 
tion, all his okl high dreams and ambitions, he 
felt, would seem of no account, whether he re- 
alized them or not. 

“ Often,” he went on, “ I fear I have aimed 
at what is beyond reach — what cannot he ac- 
tually realized.” 

Isabel quoted : 

“ Pitch thy behaviour low, thy projects high, 

So sha't thou humble and magnanimous be; 

Sink not in spirit ; who aimeth at the ahy 
Shoots higher much than he that means a tree.” 

“ Do you bid me follow that rule?” said God- 
^yyn eagerly. 

“I don’t want you to lose faith in your 
dreams. I think — yes, I am sure, they are no- 
ble ones, and I want you to realize them all.” 

“ Suppose I tell you ” — he stammered, as 
usual when excited — “ It depends on you 
whether one — the brightest of all — ” 


127 


Or Nepenthe. 

“ How could it ? ” She did not fairly catch 
his words, and — confused by his manner even 
more than his stammering — felt only an im- 
pulse to stop him. ‘^No; of course you will 
have to work them out by yourself. A friend . 
cannot help you — except perhaps a little, by 
trying to keep you from losing heart.” 

Just at this moment, the voices of the chil- 
dren were heard in the distance, rousing the 
echoes by calling their names ; afterwards, in 
recalling the conversation, while blaming him- 
self for his want of self-possession, and think- 
ing of graceful methods in which he might 
have made himself better understood, he was 
fain to hope that it was a good omen, their 
names being pronounced together and ming- 
ling their echoes just at this point ; but at the 
time, confused, in his turn, by her utter fail- 
ure in comprehending his meaning, he could 
not venture further in explaining himself. 

Silence ensued, which Isabel was again the 
first to break, as she looked at the progress of 
the setting sun. 

“ There is a pretty saying I have heard of an 
Indian’s,” said she : “ ' The Great Spirit, when 
he painted the flowers, wiped his brushes on 
the sky.’ ” 

“ It is as if the artist who has just put the 


128 


A Hero’s Last Hays, 


finishing touches to the landscapes before us, 
was about to do that now,” said Godwyn, “ and 
yet — judging from the busy preparations, the 
fine massings of the clouds going on — this will 
.not be one of those sunsets that resemble the 
careless dashing and blending together of col- 
ours on a palette,— we seem about to witness a 
magnificent ceremonial, with carefully studied 
effects of detail.” 

“ There seems a sort of rivalry between the 
earth and sky which shall present the most 
beautiful tints, this evening,” Isabel remarked. 

“ But, bright as the autumn hues are, it is the 
reflection which lends their chief glory,” said 
Godwyn ; “ and we might take this shifting 
heavenward of the gorgeousness of color, as the 
day closes, for a sort of parable.” 

Here the gay voices of the children, return- 
ing from the cave, interrupted the tete-a-tete. 
They had tired themselves by running back 
and, now throwing themselves on the rock be- 
side Isabel, rested their heads in her lap. The 
clouds assuming some fanciful forms, the con- 
versation dropped into finding resemblance in 
them to all manner of objects. 

“ There is an old castle,” said Una, after a 
bear-hunt, a sea-piece and an alligator had 
been admired. 


129 


Or Nepenthe. 

“ And there is a fairy prince with a golden 
mantle, riding up to it,” said Godwyn. 

“ It is more like a lady,” said Amy. 

‘‘Well, we will call her an errant-princess — 
a sort of Britomart,” said Godwyn, “ coming 
to the rescue of a captive knight.” 

He had amused himself, as well as the chil- 
dren, by inventing several fairy-tales, on former 
occasions, and it was no wonder that, upon this 
opening, Una insisted on his making another. 

“ Do,” said Isabel, “ I really want very much 
to hear one of your stories — Una has given me 
such descriptions of them.” 

“ Well, I will do my best,” he said. “ I am 
not sure, Una, that I don’t see a little imp of a 
fairy-tale peeping out of the window of your 
castle. You may find it has dressed itself up,” 
he added, addressing Isabel — “ with some scraps 
of our tale about dreams and dreams.” 

He then related the following : 

STORY OF DREAMLAND. 

There was once a Prince for whom a being 
related to the fairies and named Musa, had 
stood godmother. I am not sure whether this 
was a lucky thing for him or not; Musa has 
often been charged with being a betrayer of 
her favourites ; on the other hand, it is said she 


180 


A Hero’s Last Days, 

never betrays any one who lias not first be- 
trayed her. She always seemed gracious to 
the Prince and wanted to have him all to her- 
self, to be brought up as her own son. 

This offer was not accepted for the Prince. 
It was thought such an education would hardly 
fit him for the difficulties he would probably 
have to contend with in life ; for his inheri- 
tance was small, and lay in the midst of a 
country distracted b}^ revolutions, so that he 
was liable to be dethroned at any moment. 

“ At least I must insist on having occasional 
visits from him,” said Musa, when this was ex- 
plained. Remember, boy, you have a stand- 
ing invitation to my palace in Dreamland. I 
shall be always ready at your call, to take you 
there when you wish.” 

Afterwards, she presented him with a winged 
horse that could take him there without any 
difficulty, and, whenever he got into trouble, or 
wished to be entertained by her company he 
would set off on a visit to her realms. In this 
\vay Dreamland — at least that part of it which 
was the domain of his friend, which was called 
the Land of Good Dreams — became as familiar 
to him as his own home. 

It was full of the most beautiful scenery. 
The sky was bluer, the grass greener, and the 


Or Nepenthe. 131 

flowers fairer, than in our world. The people 
were all good, the men brave, and the women 
beautiful. But there were strange drawbacks ; 
the scenery had a way of shifting, — indeed it 
could be changed at will. This was not un- 
pleasant, if you wished it changed ; hut if you 
did not, it was not agreeable to have it sud- 
denly fade and melt away, as often happened — 
it gave an impression of want of solidity. Then 
the people had a peculiar way of vanishing, if 
you looked at them too hard — you could 
scarcely satisfy yourself that they were real 
people. 

Owing to these things, the Prince was never 
altogether content with Dreamland, or willing 
to remain over a certain length of time. “ Noth- 
ing is quite real,” he would say, with a sigh. 
Yet, in spite of this feeling, he sometimes en- 
joyed his visits extremely. Musa understood 
how to adapt herself, and the amusements she 
provided for him, to his moods, and her society 
became more and more attractive as he grew 
older. After the splendors with which he had 
been surrounded in her palace, the real world 
often seemed common -pi ace and tame. 

Many strange adventures befell him during 
his visits to Dreamland. Some of them, indeed, 
were of a frightful character. These had oc- 


132 


A Heroes Last Days, 


curred when, as a little child, pla3dng hide-and- 
seek with the Dream-children, or, following 
the pleasures of the chase, when older, he had 
chanced to cross the boundary line which sep- 
arated Musa’s territory from the Land of Bad 
Dreams. The latter was under the control of 
an evil spirit, who had put a spell on the ground, 
so that an}" one who set his foot on it, became 
rooted to it, like a tree, unable to stir, or to re- 
sist the attacks of the monsters who roamed 
about that land, and who could change their 
shape at will, like Musa’s subjects, onh^ that 
these were horrible creatures. He must have 
been a brave man who was not frightened by 
them, — or still more, by the apparition of the 
evil spirit himself, as he would come charging 
along, mounted on a horse of the night-mare 
species, at any one who had unfortunately 
straj^ed into his dominions. He disliked Musa 
and seemed to have contracted a spite against 
the Prince, who barely escaped with his life, 
several times, from his realms, and then onl}^ 
by the aid of Musa; though she had little 
power outside of her own kingdom. 

As the Prince grew older, Musa began to in- 
struct him in the arts she always teaches her 
favourites. There have been men who have 
attained through her a wonderful power, by 


133 


Or Nepenthe. 

which all they touched in the unsubstantial 
realms of Dreamland, became no longer capable 
of change, losing that ujisatisfactory character 
which had often distressed the Prince; thus 
they had often won, for our world, large inheri- 
tances out of those strange and shifting regions ; 
they had also been able to confer enduring 
character and immortality on some of the peo- 
ple of Dreamland, and brought them down to 
be loved and admired on earth. 

The Prince tried to learn this art and ac- 
quired some knowledge of its difficulties from 
( Musa’s lessons. By way of testing his own pro- 
^ ficiency, he used to pluck flowers out of Musa’s 
garden and take them home with him on his 
return from Dreamland ; but though he suc- 
ceeded in bringing them down to the common 
world, they often looked changed and ugly, 
so that he had to tlirow tlieni aside as worth- 
less. 

Another inducement for him to pass more 
and more tiine in Dreamland, was that he had 
set his affections on a Dream-maiden. His 
friends, wishing him to give up his constant 
visits there, thought that if he could fall in 
love, there might be attraction for him at 
home ; one young lady after another was thrown 
in his way by them. None made a conquest 


134 


A Herd's Last Days, 


of his heart, because the Dream-maiden was 
much more charming than any of them. 

She was a capricious creature; the colour of 
her eyes and hair were continually changing ; 
and it was the same with her name and manners, 
her height, her figure and complexion. If she 
suspected the Prince of a passing admiration 
for any one else, she could instantly assume a 
resemhlaiice to this rival, — at the same time 
displaying beauty so superior to hers that his 
wavering heart returned to its allegiance; or 
she would succeed in re-attracting him by 
suddenly coming out in an altogether new 
style of beauty, with every characteristic un- 
like that of the young lady she wished to out- 
shine. 

Now there was one who could have released 
the Princess from her coquettish arts ; this was 
a Princess whose name was Fairer-than-Dreams, 
whose inheritance lay in the, same land as the 
})rincipality to which he was heir. By the force 
of her charms, she could easily have overcome 
his passion for the Dream-maiden ; but he knew 
nothing about her, as yet. 

Meantime a great war came on and put 
everything else out of his head, for a time. He 
took part on the unsuccessful side and lost his 
inheritance in consequence. 


135 


Or Nepenthe. 

Once, when he and a few others who still re- 
mained faithful to the cause they had espoused, 
were consulting how to carry on the war, the 
banner they had followed was suddenly caught 
up by an invisible hand and borne up into the 
clouds. 

“ Let us follow it still,” cried the Prince, — 
and he rushed in the direction in which it 
had disappeared. 

He presently found himself alone in his pur- 
suit ; still he would not stop, but followed on, 
up hill and down dale, till at last, in the midst 
j of a lonely desert, he was suddenly unable to 
^ stir a step in any direction. He had, in fact, 
unwittingly crossed the boundaries of Dream- 
land, not through the Vale of Sleep or by the 
beautiful Gate of Fancy, his usual entrances 
into the pleasant land reigned over by his God- 
mother ; but he had approached, by the unsus- 
pected mountain-pass of False Hopes, the do- 
main of his old enemy, the evil spirit, who, when 
he became aware of the fact, sent some of his 
guards to take him prisoner. As the Prince > 
being under the power of enchantment, could 
1 not overcome them, they carried him off to the 
stronghold of the evil spirit, the Castle of Hope- 
lessness, wherv. he was thrown into a dungeon. 

There he lay a long while. His friends and 


136 A Herd’s Last Days, 

others made efforts to rescue him, but all proved 
unsuccessful. 

Now the same revolution in which he had 
lost his inheritance, had also sent the Princess 
Fairer-than-Dreams • into exile, — by the way, 
she was his far-away cousin; royal families are 
apt to be related to each other, you know. 

“ I am glad I ventured to put that in,” 
thought Godwyn to himself afterwards. That 
Isabel noticed it, he was certain, for she sud- 
denly turned her head in another direction, so 
that he could not see it very well, and did not 
once look at him afterwards. Afraid he had 
gone too far, he hurried on with his allegory, 
but could not, as the reader will see, avoid the 
temptation of forcing her a second time to see 
its personal application. 

The princess took refuge in a remote alley, 
where, one day, she chanced to meet three old 
women sitting in the sun and spinning with 
old-fashioned distaffs. They were the Fates ; 
and when the Princess met them, they chanced 
to be busy with the destiny of -our Prince. 
They were disputing whether to lengthen out 
the span of his life by twisting in a golden 
thread with the strand of flax, as thin as a hair, 


Or Nepenthe. 137 

by which he still held on to existence, or to cut 
it short. 

“ Let her decide,” said one of them, as she 
spied the Princess. 

‘‘ Decide what?” Fairer-than-Dreams asked. 

The only answer she received was: ‘‘ Follow 
us” 

She followed, not knowdng w’here they were 
leading her, till she came to the castle where 
the Prince was imprisoned. She had passed 
through the land of Bad Dreams without feel- 
ing the enchantment, because she was protected 
j by her guard — I forgot to mention them before 
: — consisting of three invincible maiden war- 
riors. One of these bore a cross, one an anchor, 
and one a golden shield, shaped like a heart ; 
i and these charms were stronger than the en- 
chantments of the evil spirit, who did not dare 
to oppose the progress of the Princess. Fol- 
lowing the Fates therefore, she passed on 
unhurt through the very walls of his castle, 
and of the dungeon of the Prince, who gazed 
at her with wonder. 

Then one of the Fates put into her hand a 
I golden cup, containing a clear, sparkling liquid. 

“It is the cup of Nepenthe,” said she. “You 
may choose whether you will give it to him 
to drink, or pour it out to waste on the ground.” 


138 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


The Prince went on his knees to her. He 
quite understood who the strange old women 
were, and that they had committed his happi- 
ness to the decision of the Princess. He knew, 
too, the virtues of the water of Nepenthe. 
It differs from that of Lethe in this : that 
it does not drown the memory of past sorrows, 
but changes them to present joys. 

This divine drink is described by Spencer: 


‘‘ Nepenthe is a drink of sovereign grace, 
Devised hy the gods for to assuage 
Heart’s grief, and bitter gall away to chase, 
Which stir up anger and contentious rage; 
Instead whereof sweet peace and quietage 
It doth establish in the troubled mind 
Few men but such as sober are, and sage, 

Are by the gods to drink of it assigned ; 

But such as drink, eternal happiness do find ! ” 


Godwyn paused. 

‘Hto on,” cried Una. “Of course she gave 
liimthecup!” 

“I am not sure,” said he. “Miss Langdon 
shall say.” ^ 

The dusk could not conceal from him tha^^ 
she blushed 


“ I think,” she said, trying to speak uncon-'; 
strainedly, “it would be better to make youii 
Prince wprk his way out of prison himself 


Or Nepenthe. 


139 


, one’s destiny does not really depend so entirely 
•on the will of another.” 

i “Is it not so in life?” he asked. “Is not 
I our destiny — our hanniness. at least — made de- 



) “ Then you decide that the Princess should 

deny him the draught.” 

“ 0, Isabel ! Don’t be horrid ! ” cried Una. 

L “ End it your own way, Mr. Godwyn,” said 
jsabel, — then, catching herself up, “that is, — I 
hiean it is no matter.” 

^ “Well — I will end it in my own w^ay,” said 
, l^odwyn, and he went on : 

Then she gave him the cup, and after he 
had drank of it, he was free, and they went 
hand-in-hand back to the world. Afterwards, 
the help of Musa, a beautiful home was 
built for them, where they were to live happy 
ever after. 


; “We must go, — it is getting late,” said Isabel, 
Rising and leading the way towards the Chalet. 
Amy put her hand in hers, and Una siezed 
n-and kept Alfred’s, so that he had no oppor- 
Ul iunity, until they reached home, of speaking 
Ifjjto Isabel, without being overheard by them; 


140 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


but, just as they were entering the house, he 
managed to do so. 

“ It does matter,” he said, “ what the end of 
the story is to be.” ^ 

It was impossible, after this, for her to con- 
tinue altogether blind to his real feelings, and 
not to begin to analyze her own. * But her va- 
ried occupations left her little time for self- 
scrutiny, and maidenly delicacy rendered her 
averse to considering as if it were serious what^ 
might have been meant lightly. Yet she could^ 
not feel as much at ease, now that the elemem 
of self-consciousness had been roused, as sh< 
had felt before. 

She was very shy and distant with him for 
a day or two, and, while something told himi 
that no great harm had been done, he was care- 
ful not to startle her again at this time. He 
saw that he had not yet sufficient reason for 
forcing an explanation, and made up his mind 
not to do so until the end of his visit to the 
Langdons. 

The next day, John Langdon proposed takings 
him on a hunting expedition. His idea of a 
thoroughly good time was a bivouac of severa! 
days in the woods, and he felt that he musi 
offer that enjoyment to his friend during hii 
visit. He proposed taking a tent, one of his. 


Or Nepenthe. 141 

farm hands to wait upon them, and a mule 
for the baggage, and for Godwyn to ride, upon 
occasion. 

Godwyn was reluctant to leave the Chalet, 
but it would have been ungracious to refuse 
what had been planned for his amusement; 
and he not only enjoyed himself thoroughly, 
but returned greatly the better for the trip. 

“ He is certainly very handsome,” said Mrs. 
Langdon, the day after his return; “I hardly 
thought so before, but I see it now. 

“ I notice a difference in his step,” said Colonel 
Langdon; “there is more vigor in it, and in 
the sound of his voice, — his laugh is like a 
boy’s.” 

“It is strange how boyish he is in many 
ways,” his daughter went on; “somehow he 
seems as much on a level with the children 
as with grown people; and yet, when he is 
talking with you, I think I never saw one so 
old for his years.” 

“Perhaps it is -his poet temperament,” ob- 
served Colonel Langdon. 


142 


A Heroes Last Days, 


CHAPTER VIII. 

“ Little they dream, those haughty souls 
AVhom empires own on bended knee, 

What lowly fate their own controls, 

Together linked by Heaven’s decree.” 

— Kebi.e. 

It was true that Godwyn seemed equally at 
home in playing with the children or arguing 
with Col Langdon ; but his deepest heart was 
in the subject on which their discussions Itave 
been given. To that their conversations al- 
ways tended. The day after his return from the 
hunting expedition, it was resumed, almost at 
the point where they had dropped it, some days 
since. 

“ While you were gone, I kept turning over 
your theory in my mind,” said the blind man, 
‘‘ and, I confess to you, even granting its cor- 
rectness, — that is, that the analogy between 
States and individuals, under the present econ- 
omy, is perfect, — I see no grounds for hoping 
that good is to come out of evil to the South at 
present. It is only for those who have accepted 
Clirist, and that not in name only, that we are 
justified, by revelation, in believing that all 


Or Nepenthe. ’ 143 

events shall work for good. Now, we may be 
called a Christian people, and, if, by that ex- 
pression, it is merely meant that Christianity 
in its purest forms is the prevailing religion, 
I grant the right to the name ; but I must deny 
it, if the term is meant to imply that the popu- 
lar character is imbued with the' spirit of 
Christianity, that we are, in short, a Chris- 
tianized people. In my opinion no people on 
earth has a right to the title of Christian in this 
sense — in which the acceptance of Christ into 
the national heart, not merely by profession, is 
implied.” 

He qualified this by proceeding to say that 
he only meant to deny the title as not proven. 
He admitted that the same considerations which 
should restrain us from pronouncing too de- 
cidedly upon the absence of religious feeling in 
an individual, might withhold us in deciding 
upon a nation’s claim to be called Christian. 
It was odious presumption in certain religionists 
to undertake, as they did, to pronounce upon 
the religious status of others. We cannot al- 
ways judge, by the degree in which it appears 
to influence action, of the reality of faitli ; that 
principle might exist, in its feeble beginnings, 
in many a heart, although it did not make it- 
self evident to our necessarily superficial oh- 


144 


A Heroes Last Days, 


servation of the outward life; the conduct 
which in one man might evidence a want of 
faith might, in another, be a real, though im- 
perfect victory of the principle of faith. “ ’Tis 
He, who knows the heart alone, decidedly can 
try us.” On the other hand, where the life gives 
no ground for hope that the mysterious regen- 
erating agency, which we call faith, is at work, 
we have no right to do more than merely sus- 
pend our judgment, as upon a point in which 
we have no jurisdiction. 

Colonel Langdon further maintained that no 
nation, as a nation, could be said to have been j 
prompted in any given national action by the » 
Christian, as distinguished from the natural | 
motives. Take the British — the most favorable 
instance, he considered, that could be selected, 
since, in it, Christianity seemed to have reached 
a higher form of development than in any 
other. Selfish interest was the avowed motive 
allowed, in national actions, to overbear all 
others, — than which nothing could be more con- 
trary to the conception of Cliristian character. 

“ Not that it is a wrong, or distinctly un- 
christian motive,” said Godwyn, “as Butler 
clearly shows.” 

“ Certainly not, if it is a subordinate one,” * 
said Colonel . Langdon. ,| 


Or Nepenthe. 


145 


Motives, he went on, as Butler suggests, may 
be noble, virtuous, and even religious, without 
being distinctively Christian. Far from dis- 
daining them, Christianity continually appeals 
^ to the natural motives ; for instance, regard to 
self-interest ; it does not teach that we are to ne- 
glect that. It, indeed, insists that the higher in- 
terests of self shall be preferred to the lower ; but 
this natural religion also inculcates, — ancient 
philosophers were strenuous upon this point. 

■ But the distinctively Christian motive is the de- 
^ sire of conformity to the character of Christ. 

Christianity calls in the motive power of a 
? personal attachment to the embodiment of pure 
^goodness, to draw men’s hearts to that towards 
which the consideration of their better interests 
had been found inadequate to attract them. 

, The Christian motive would lead us in the 
same direction as a highly educated natural 
sense of right. It was intended gradually to 
supersede the natural motives — which it would 
only allow to influence us in a secondary 
manner. 

' The existence of this desire of conformity 
to Christ in the heart, proceeded Colonel Lang- 
don, was the essence of the Christian life ; but, 
that it acts uj)on any but a small minority of 
the human race, we have no grounds whatever 
5 


146 


A Hero's Last Days, 


1 


to affirm ; in regard to the majority, even of the 
most Christian of peoples, we have no right 
to assume that they are even influenced by 
this characteristically Christian motive, or, con- 
sequently, for indulging in hopes that the 
whole, or even the greater part of aii}^ nation, 
shall, by the divine transmuting agency, on 
which individuals are entitled to rely, reap only, 
benefit from the changes and chances of this 
life. ; 

“You said,” said Godwyn, “that a whole”'* 
people could not be considered in any instance , 
to have been swayed by that motive, and I ad- f 
mit that they may not, consciously ; and yet ^ 
their leaders may surely be influenced by it* 
and the whole people through them ; thus the 
Christian motive may colour and influence na-1 
tional action. You do not doubt, sir, that, in i 
our late war, many of our public men — the 
most prominent, I may say — were prompted in 
what they did by their conceptions of Christian 
duty ? ” 

“No doubt!” said Colonel Langdon. “In- 
deed, I like to think that the men who had 
most influence in that movement in the South, 
and who must hereafter be considered to char- 
acterize it, were deeply conscientious and, for 
the most part, Christian men. But the infer- 


147 


Or Nepenthe. 

ence I draw is simply that it was the tendency 
of our former State Constitutions to throw 
power into trustworthy hands, — as Calhoun 
declares must be the case with governments 
lounded on correct principles. Yet the class to 
whom you refer, by no means constituted the 
majority ; and, even if they did constitute it, 
are not to be confounded with the whole peo- 
ple.” 

“ But, though not to be confounded with the 
whole, surely, Colonel Langdon, there are cases 
and senses in which a part often stands cor- 
rectly for the whole. Is it not conceivable that, 

^ in virtue of even a small minority, a whole na- 
tion may be accounted as Christians? You 
admitted that the Christian faith might often 
exist in individuals, though so feebly as to be 
imperceptible, and, where it had manifested 
itself in a man, even by slight indications, I 
suppose you would not refuse the name Chris- 
tian to him, though his faith might be over- 
shadowed, at times, by various other opposing 
principles which still influenced him. If it be 
real, it will, in time, dominate over the whole 
being, like the leaven hid in the meal. Now 
the principle of faith, I consider, exists in the 
national life so soon as Christianity has attained 
sufficient hold to form a self-supporting and 


148 


A llei'o’s Last Days, 


distinct element in it ; other opposing prin- 
ciples continue to work in the national heart, — ‘ 

but, as soon as this element is fairly perceptible 
— and surely, in the case of our own people, it 
is far more than that — I look upon it as giving - 
character to the whole.” 

“ I recollect a remark of the friend whom I 
have quoted before,” said Colonel Langdon, | 
“ which may apply here, though he was re- ^ 
ferring to a ver}^ different subject — the Chris- ,, 
tian doctrine of the atonement. He said : ‘ The * 
justice of the substitution of persons, the im- 
puting the guilt or righteousness of one to an- . 
other, is not altogether comprehensible by our J 
faculties ; but we can approximate to under- 4 
standing that it might be just, by putting some I 
such case as this : given that one person yields 1 
up the judgment and will, out of love to an- < 
other — as a wife often, to a husband — so that i 
the opinions are moulded and the actions di- 
rected by him — we must admit that that other j 
is fairly held responsible, in place of the first. ^ 
In the same way, Christ may become respon- ' 
sible for those who yield to him an undivided ; 
homage of the will, and his righteousness may \ 
be imputed to them.’ This sort of substitution, . 
you perceive, implies an identification of the J 
will of the two parties. Now I think it is an 1 


Or Nepenthe. 


149 


objection to your idea of making tlie Cliristian 
element of the nation stand for the whole, that 
there could be no such supposed identification 
between the parties/’ 

“ You will understand that I do not mean 
that it could stand for the whole, Colonel 
Langdon, at all in the sense of its atoning for tlie 
rest, as we believe that Clirist atones for sin. 
That is the exclusive prerogative of his divine 
perfection. But the Christian element may 
represent the nation, just as the nobler ideal of 
: a man’s character, obscured and struggling in 
him against his baser self, represents the man at 
his possible true value.” 

I “I have thought, since reading those essays 
of yours,” said Colonel Langdon, ‘Hhat the con- 
! ception of the double moral nature, as existing 
f perhaps in nations as well as individuals, was 
\ interesting.” 

“ The possible purely perfect, as well as the 
possible purely evil development,” said God- 
wyn, “ appears to me inseparable from the idea 
of a national character. They find their ex- 
pression in typical individuals at every stage of 
a nation’s life. It seems to me the French peo- 
I pie present such types in particularly strong 
I contrasts. I suppose it is from their tendency 
to rush to extremes.” 


150 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


“ Voltaire’s saying that the F renchman is a 
combination of a tiger and an ape, immediately 
recurs to the mind,” said Colonel Langdon. 

“x4.nd Robespierre as the embodiment of the 
worst side of French character,” said Godwyn ; 
“ but, on the other hand, what noble specimens 
of humanity were — to present the first names 
that occur from St. Louis down — Bayard, Colig- 
ny, Sully, Fenelon, Vincent de Paul, Monta- 
lambert! And French women present the 
same violently coiRrasted types.” 

“Of the actual Frenchman,” said Colonel 
Langdon, “Voltaire himself, perhaps, is the 
truest representative.” 

“ You mean a representative of the average 
moral level ? ” 

“Yes. His character presents some points 
for admiration as well as reprobation, and he is 
always intensely French.” 

“ But I cannot think,” said Godwyn, “ that 
the average man is to be regarded as the true 
representative of a people. We should judge 
of a nation as we judge of a plant, not by can- 
kered or imperfect specimens, but by the con- 
summate flower.” 

“ Judge of the Southern people by General 
Lee!” said Colonel Langdon. “Would that 
we might ! ” 


151 


Or Nepenthe. 

Indeed, if — as you suggested — ” said God- 
wyn, “ love may so identify different personal- 
ities as to make it just that the qualities of one 
should be imputed to others, we may fairly 
claim to be represented by him. Our people 
are intensely loyal to him.” 

Might it not be given to such individuals, he 
asked, to sustain in themselves the character of 
the whole people ? Might not the whole peo- 
' pie, in their person, reap the benefit of what- 
ever beneficial discipline might be found in 
I poverty and other distressing present evils of 
; our condition, imitating Wordsworth’s Happy 
; Warrior, 

' “ Who, doomed to go in company witli pain 

And fear and bloodshed, miserable train, 

Turns his necessity to glorious gain, — 

In face of these doth exercise a power 
Which is our human nature’s highest dower, 
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves 
Of their bad influence and their good receives?” 

I believe,” he proceeded, that such indi- 
viduals — the highest development and expres- 
I sion of the national existence — may just as 
legitimately exercise Christian virtues in be- 
half of a whole people as parents are permitted 
to exercise faith in behalf of little children in 
bringing them, to baptism. But why do I say 


152 A Hero's Lout Days, 

may ? I believe they are actually doing so at 
present in behalf of the Southern people. A 
beautiful example is to be found in the person 
of a late noble Bishop, South Carolina’s gift to 
Georgia, — as may be seen in the series of dis- 
courses called, in a prefatory, notice, his ‘ Last 
Will and Testament,’ in reference to the politi- 
cal troubles of the country.” 

“ I am struck with your instancing Bishop 
Elliott,”, said Colonel Langdon. “ I was in- 
formed by the friend whom I have quoted so 
often, who was his brother-in-law, that he main- 
tained a theory similar to yours, in opposition 
to his opinions, and that they had often argued 
the question together, — though I cannot tell 
you his line of argument. He looked — as you 
appear to do — for the gradual regeneration ot 
nations through the increase of the number ot 
righteous persons — the Christian element — in 
them.” 

“ I could have divined that, I think,” said 
Godwyn, from his remains. But it gratifies 
me to be assured of it.” 

The conversation digressed, for a little, into 
personal anecdotes of that remarkable man, the 
admiration of all who knew him. Colonel 
Langdon resumed the discussion by saying : 

“ The present phase of our, history — even 


\ 




Or Nepenthe. 


153 


upon your theory — is one in which the lower 
nature has, for the time, obtained the 'ascen- 
dency in the national life. That ascendency 
must be expected to continue while the present 
form of the State governments remains un- 
changed * ; it is that of absolute democracy, and 
— as Calhoun demonstrates — it is the direct 
tendency of such governments to relegate the 
better class of persons to private life and to 
throw power into unprincipled hands. This 
has been the tendency in the Northern States 
— to which our constitutions have now been 
assimilated — since the formation of the Union, 
— though various causes, acting as restraints, 
have prevented their effects from being even 

*This opinion was formed at the time this book 
was written, when there seemed no prospect of the 
white people’s recovery of the controlling power in 
the South for a long period. In the first flush of the 
triumph of 1877 — which was to the white people of 
South Carolina what the Restoration was to the Cavalier 
party in England — the forebodings here indicated were 
forgotten ; but the course of events recalled and deep- 
ened the conviciion that only a temporary respite from 
the evils of misgovernment was the result of that tri- 
umph. The happy opportunity has since occurred of so 
again re-constructing the Constitution of that State that 
it has again become a government of concurrent ma- 
jorities — however ditierently arranged from formerly — 
instead of a despotism of the absolute majority. 


154 


A Hero's Last Days, 


yet generally recognized. In the South, the 
homogeneous nature of the lower class, — the 
opposite of theirs, which is particularly com- 
plex in its divisions — promoted the rapid de- 
velopment of the legitimate results of such 
governments in the' shocking farces being en- 
acted at present in the Southern legislatures 
and courts of so-called justice. The triumph 
of the conservative element might, for a time, 
check abuses ; but unless it was signalized by a 
re-introduction of the principles of true con- 
stitutional government, it could only end in 
the corruption of that element, and would be 
no permanent subject of congratulation. You 
will remember the passage in which Calhoun 
declares that neither religion nor education can 
prevent the mass of men from becoming cor- 
rupted under the government of an absolute 
democracy?” 

“ The task of restoring the destroyed balance 
of governmental agencies may prove more deli- 
cate and difficult than that of our fathers in 
the first construction of our government,” said 
Godwyn. I believe it the duty of the white 
people of the South to set before themselves a 
definite purpose of this kind as the chief end 
of a return to powder.” 

Tt is exceedingly unlikely that they would 


COI 




Or Nepenthe. 


155 


understand how to effect that purpose, even in 
the improbable event of their accession to 
power,” said the blind man. 

You will remember. Colonel Langdon, that 
other passage in Calhoun,” said Godwyn, 
“ where, after observing that the deliberate 
construction of constitutional governments or 
the restoration of them, when destroyed, seemed 
a work that had hitherto surpassed human 
sagacity, so that such as had appeared seemed 
to have grown rather out of fortuitous concur- 
rence of circumstances than conscious effort, — 
he traces the hand of Providence in the forma- 
tion of our own system ? I believe its restora- 
tion will be more apt to be the consequence of 
some similar concurrence of circumstances,* 
after all, than of the deliberate wisdom of the 
leaders of any party.” 

‘‘ The inference that Providence is shaping 
the course of human events for the benefit of 
our people, drawn from the history of the 
establishment of the government,” said Colonel 
Langdon, “ might be contradicted, by the over- 
throw, or rather the transformation it has un- 
dergone.” 

It may be iiermitted to the writer to say that the 
course of after events seemed strangely to confirm the 
line of argument here imputed to Godwyn. 


156 


A Hero's Last Days, 


“ If the hand of Providence is discernible as 
working for the good of an individual, in even 
one event of his life,” said Godwyn, “ that, I 
take it, affords grounds for hope that sub- 
sequent occurrences may be ordered or over- 
ruled for his benefit.” 

“ The truth is,” said Colonel Langdon, “ that 
all events are open to various interpretations, 
so that no possible concatenation in the present 
system of things is to be considered as of un- 
mixed good or evil bearing. For while the 
obvious direct tendency of a thing might be 
only evil, the indirect might be to moral advan- 
tage. Circumstances are fortunate or unfor- 
tunate, not so much in themselves, as in the 
way we take them, and may be made to work 
us good or ill accordingly. For this reason, it 
is to the eye of faith only, that Providence is 
clearly discernible in the life of any indi- 
vidual.” 

“ You mean that we can only argue the in- 
tention of Providence from results, — but were 
not the results of the establishment of our gov- 
ernment beneficial for nearly eighty years? 
The blessings of good government would have 
to be withdrawn for at least an equal period, 
before we could fairly cast a doubt on the de- 
sign of Providence in allowing it to be estab- 
lished.” 


Or Nepenthe. 157 

“ I own I think you make a point here,” said 
Colonel Langdon. “ The beneficent intention 
seems as plain as it would be reasonable to ex- 
pect.” 

“ I think it cannot be denied,” said Godwyn, 
“ that the history of our people, till within the 
last five years, presents a remarkable picture of 
moral advance. But it was not to have been 
expected that this should continue uninter- 
rupted. The law of progress in the spiritual 
life is happily comjDared, in a recent religious 
work I have come across here, to the move- 
ment of the tide as it comes in, now and then 
obviously gaining ground through a forward 
wave, — yet a proportionate retreat ever seem- 
ing to succeed the advance. Now, in a national 
existence, a period of more than one generation 
may count for no more than the space of the 
recessional movement of one wave of an ad- 
vancing tide ; and as — in the case of an indi- 
vidual — it might be difficult, between the 
'waves, for a man himself, or for others, to know 
whether he was really, upon the whole, losing 
or gaining ground, still more it might be diffi- 
cult in the case of a nation. In truth, in either 
man or nation, the upper current is all that is 
ever visible to our necessarily superficial ob- 
servation ; and, while that was visibly falling 


158 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


back, a strong, resistant, forward movement 
might be going on beneath the surface.” 

“ There is another passage still, in the vol- 
ume to which I refer,”* said Godwyn, “which, 
it struck me, might be made to bear on the 
present aspects of our situation as a people. If 
you will permit me, I will read you the ex- 
tract.” 

Colonel Langdon assenting, he found the 
book and read as follows : 

“ It has been said of the eagle,— and if natural histor}’’ 
will not bear it out, the piety with which the fable has 
been applied serves to reconcile us to the fiction— that 
the parent bird practises the young to fly by dropping 
them, when half-fiedged, from her wings; and that, 
when the breeze is proving too strong for them and 
their little pinions begin to flag and waver amid the 
resistance of the air, she swoops underneath them, 
having indeed never lost sight of them for an instant, 
and receives them again upon her own person, and sails 
on with them majestically as before. We have in the 
supposed fact a most true representative of the way in- 
which God proves His children. The eagle, watching 
her young with keen eye, and sweeping beneath them 
with outstretched wing, as she sees them faint with 
exliaustion, — our Lord walking on the waters and 
stretching forth His hand to I’eter when He saw him 
sinking — these similitudes give the exact idea of the 
relations between Christ and the tempted soul. If thou 
hast not yet finally abandoned the struggle; if thou 


*Goulbui’n’s Thoughts on Personal Religion. 


Or Nepenthe. 


159 


hast again picked up thy resolve and taken heart for a 
new resistance, — why is it? This recovery, this pause 
in the downward career, was not of thyself. It was the 
Divine Eagle, swooping beneath her young, as drooping 
and baffled, they commenced a downward course ; it was 
the Lord, stietching forth His saving hand and catching 
the poor disciple before altogether engulphed. The fact, 
than which notiung can be more certain, that He is 
looking on wiih keenest interest, while humbling thee 
and proving thee, to see what is in thine heart; — that 
He is at hand to give succour when he sees the right 
moment to have arrived, a little above thee in the sky 
or close at thy side upon the pillow ; — that His Omnip- 
otence, His Love, His Wisdom, are all engaged in admin- 
istering the temptation, in meeting it out, in adjusting it 
to thy strength, in not allowing it to proceed t » undue 
lengths — this of itself should prove a cordial to thy, 
heart, and invigorate thee to I'ursue the course on which 
thou hast entered.” 

Now,” said Godwyn, “ a Providential ar- 
rangement of circumstances, affording an op- 
portunity for the restoration of good govern- 
ment, would be such a swooping of the Divine 
Eagle to the rescue of our people.” 

This was the last time in which these dis- 
cussions took the form of argument, — hence- 
forth they were chiefly concerned in examining 
the manner in which Godwyn’s hypotheses 
might be applied. Colonel Langdon practically 
admitting that his chief objections against them 
had been so far met as to satisfy him that the 


100 


A Heroes Lad Days, 


theory might be accepted without violence to 
reason. Godwyn himself, it may be remem- 
bered, had admitted the desirability of addi- 
tional evidence in favor of his views, recog- 
nizing absolute certainty to be unattainable. 


CHAPTER IX. 

“ Oil ! call it Providence or fate, 

The Sphyiix propounds the riddle still 
That man must bear or expiate 
Loads of involuntary ill ; 

So shall endurance ever hold 
‘ The foremost rank ’mid human needs. 

Not without faith that God can mould 
To good the dross of evil deeds.” 

[Lord FToughton. 

One afternoon Godwyn happened to come 
into the library when Isabel was reading to her 
father from Milton’s Sonnets, and a conversa- 
tion grew out of the circumstance. Colonel 
Langdon mentioned that they had been for 
some time reading Milton’s prose and poetical 
works in connection with Masson’s Life ; but 
he felt not sorry to be coming to an end ; for 
he found knotty, vexed questions continually 
being waked by his writings out of the rest in 
which he often now felt it best to let them re- 


Or NcpoydJie, IGl 

main, on the principle of letting sleeping dogs 
lie. 

“ This used to be my hour for recreative 
reading,” said he; “and previously — when we 
were engaged upon the lives of Scott, Southey 
and Wordsworth, in connection with their works 
— I found it answered the purpose. But I can- 
not say we have found the study ol Milton 
altogether recreative, if the word he considered 
as synonymous with amusing, though no doubt 
parts of his writings may be styled recreative 
in a far higher sense.” 

He then repeated in a manner neither God- 
wyn nor Isabel could ever forget, the noble son- 
net “ When I consider how my light is spent,” 
adding: 

“I felt the grandeur of those lines long be- 
fore my affliction made me appropriate them 
to myself. They have always appeared to me 
the finest uninspired conception of the proper 
attitude of the human soul tow^ards the Creator 
— that of child-like acquiescence in his ap- 
pointments, recognizing its own incapacity for 
perfect comprehension of the divine plan, yet 
using reason as a guide to such partial under- 
standing of it as it may attain to.” 

“ I have taken the sonnet on his twenty-third 
birthday as a sort of motto for myself,” said 
Godwyn. 


1G2 


A Hero's Last Days, 


“ You could not find a nobler,” said Colonel 
Langdon. “ The two together embody the 
spirit of a consecrated life in its active and pas- 
sive phases. There is the high resolve : 

‘ But be it less or more, or soon or slow. 

It shall be still in strictest measure even 
AVith that same lot, however mean or high, 

Towards which time leads me and t^’e will of Heaven. 
All is, if I have grace to use it so. 

As ever in my Great Taskmaster’s eye,’ 

contrasted with the reflection : 

“They also serve who only stand and wait.’ 

But let us see how — according to ^mur favour- 
ite idea — suth principles of action and feeling 
may be applied to political affairs.” 

“ In my view,” said Godwyn, ‘‘ eA^ery priA^ate 
life in Avhich the ends of being are truly ful- 
filled, that is to say which exhibits these as- 
pects of passive and actiy^e co-operation with 
the Divine Will, is credited to the national ex- 
istence of which it is the culmination.” 

“ The moral of which is; Let each one strive 
after the highest pitch of Aurtue for his coun- 
try’s sake,” said Colonel Langdon. “ But AAdiat 
I AA^ant to arrive at, is Avhat are the precise vir- 
tues Avhich individuals among us are noAv par- 
ticularly called upon to exercise in political 


Or Nepenthe. 


163 


affairs in behalf of the South if — as you be- 
lieve — they may do so with the hope that in, by 
and through them, the whole people may act 
and feel. Eight feeling, and not action, seems 
to be what is just now required; they would 
seem to be chiefly called upon to exercise the 
high grace of forgiveness of the Northern peo- 
ple for the injuries they have inflicted upon us, 
and of submission of the will, — in regard to 
our desire to have a separate national govern- 
ment and in our attitude towards the Federal 
Government, where passivity is as much our 
policy as our duty.” 

“ But surely it should be a protesting pas- 
sivity,” said Godwyn. “ I feel it a pity that all 
our old oracles seem just now struck with 
dumbness.”* 

“ The former leaders of thought feel that 
what they say will be misinterpreted, if not by 
our own people, by the North.” 

“ Their silence will also be misinterpreted,” 
said Godwyn. And they are not answerable 
for the consequences, if what they say is wrongly 
taken. I cannot but think it their duty, as 
citizens, to bear testimony against the present 
state- of things. We would act unwisely in 


*This, it will be remembered, refers to 1870. 


104 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


neglecting General Lee’s advice to abstain from 
political agitation in Federal affairs, but — ” 

“ But just now our people are doing the very 
opposite,” said Colonel Langdon. “ This so- 
called Reform Movement,* at present on foot, 
is to me a most melancholy sign of the times. 
Its leaders are abandoning not only what may 
he called ‘ dead issues,’ hut all our former prin- 
ciples in political life. In reading the papers 
lately, the desperate course of the Democratic 
party recently, reminds me of the story told of 
the Russian mother who, being followed by a 
pack of wolves, while driving in a sledge with 
her little children, threw them, one by one, and 
even the babe from her arms, to stay the ani- 
mals, and save her own miserable life.” 

“ I assure you. Colonel Langdon, this cam- 
paign has not the character of a genuine pop- 
ular movement. It is partly owing to the very 
silence on the part of our old leaders which I 
am lamenting, that our people have allowed 
themselves to be led to give it even a partial 
support. But, although this new departure is 
in a wrong direction, I must believe activity in 
organization in reference to State politics to be 
a part of the duty of the hour.” 

*The Reform Movement of 1870 was an attempt at a 
comjiromise between the Radicals and Democrats in 
South Carolina. 


Or Nepenthe. 


105 


“ We have not the same genius for organiza- 
tion that distinguishes the Northern people,” 
said Colonel Langdon. “ They are our superiors 
in that respect.” 

“ I am not sure of that,” said Godwyn. “ We 
have not yet learnt the value of it. There was 
not, at first, the same need for it among the 
settlers at the South that there was at the 
North ; there were not the difficulties of nature 
and climate which forced people to work to- 
gether, to be able to live at all ; but, under the 
pressure of the problems we now have to face, 
we may learn to recognize the necessity of or- 
ganization in all political affairs and prove our- 
selves their equals in that respect.” 

“ Perhaps the faculty for organization is in 
proportion to the intelligence, but still needs 
occasion to develope itself, — in which case it is 
very likely we may show ourselves their equals, 
in time — for we are certainly not their inferiors 
in natural intelligence ; but, for the present, we 
must recognize their superiority in this respect,” 
said Colonel Langdon. “ By the way, it may 
be well to consider, among the duties of the 
hour, that of cultivating a right feeling towards 
the Northern people. Bound to them as we 
are in spite of ourselves, few things seem more 
important to us than that we should learn to 


166 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


regard them without prejudice. It is certainly 
the duty of private persons to check in them- 
selves and their sphere of influence that con- 
tempt for the very name of Yankee, too com- 
mon among us.” 

“ Wordsworth says, ‘ he who feels contempt, 
hath faculties that he hath never used,’ and I 
believe the same is true of one who desires re- 
venge,” said Godwyn. “As you know, my 
early childhood was passed at the North ; and 
in spite of the war, I have a kindly regard for 
many Northern persons, — indeed it would be 
impossible for me — however I disapprove their 
course — to feel any bitterness against those 
who are associated with the bright remem- 
brances of infancy. I have a very bad opinion 
of their society, since my visit to the North last 
winter ; but it does not include personal preju- 
dice against individuals ; for I was delighted 
to meet tw^o or three persons for whom I shall 
ever cherish a deep reverence. Few can feel 
exactly as I do but I think I am not excep- 
tional in at least wishing no ill to the North. 

“ Vindictiveness has never been a character- 
istic of the Anglo-Saxon stock to which we be- 
long,” said Colonel Langdon ; “ and I believe 
the temptation to bear malice against the 
Northern people, to be really less than that of 


Or Nepenthe. 167 

so adapting ourselves to the present as to as- 
similate to them in their worst faults. As one 
ingredient of the love of right is indignation 
against wrong, forgiveness by no means requires 
us to ignore unrepented offences or to love in 
the offender the qualities which induced him 
to commit them. We should will them no 
evil, but good, without a pretence of ignoring 
their conduct towards us; but we must beware 
of injustice towards the Northern people. No 
doubt, there are many among them also who 
wish us no harm, but good ; but the fruits of 
that sort of goodwill which is accompanied by 
thorough misunderstanding, are bitter enough. 
The cruelty with w^hich their victory over us 
was used to reduce us to helplessness was the 
offspring of the usual parents of cruelty, fear 
and ignorance. Many of them, no doubt, sup- 
ported re-construction under the impression 
that they were conferring substantial benefits 
upon the whites, as well as the negroes here.” 

“ They, like ourselves, are of the Anglo- 
Saxon race and not naturally cruel or vindic- 
tive,” said Goodwyn. “ There have been many 
evidences of a desire to be generous to us after 
our defeat. I own, I believe generosity to be 
a more characteristic trait of the typical Yan- 
kee than the meanness we have been apt to im- 
pute to him.” 


1G8 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


“ We find that a mixture of those seemingly 
opposite traits is often found in human charac- 
ter,” said Colonel Langdon, “ and I rather think 
it not altogether unjust to impute them to the 
Yankee in general. But he ought to be given 
the benefit of your theory that there exists a 
double ideal of national character, and that the 
nobler one represents a people more truly, how- 
ever the baser side of their nature has been 
brought into undue prominence by the action 
of a bad government, and therefore is the one 
that has presented itself in their dealing with 
the South. Now, to this nobler ideal, we must 
accord the virtues of perseverance, generosity — 
if not magnanimity — the genius for organiza- 
tion to which we have referred, — which has its 
moral bearing — energy and thrift — in which 
three last the Northern people contrast so fa- 
vourably with ours.” 

“ Whether the pressure of the times will de- 
velope the first of the three or not,” said God- 
wyn, “ the result has already been that indo- 
lence and thriftlessness can scarcely be regarded 
any longer as characterizing the South.” 

“ Well, for us, if we are not assimilating to the 
Northern people in all respects under the sys- 
tem of misrule they have inaugurated !” said 
Colonel Langdon, “ I would regard the increase 


i 


Or Nepenthe. 


169 


of wealth, which must accrue from such an as- 
similation, to be a miserable compensation for 
the loss of the better qualities which have 
hitherto distinguished us from them, — fore- 
most among which, I place truthfulness — I do 
not mean only in political affairs, but in the 
conduct of life.” 

remark was lately made to me which I 
thought very shrewd,” said Godwyn : “ ‘ It is 

no wonder the negroes and Yankees get along 
so well together; for they are exactly alike in 
two things, — they are the two most conceited 
races under the sun, and they have no regard 
for the truth.’ ” 

“ I can tell you two anecdotes curiously in 
point,” said Colonel Langdon, “ both of which 
are true. The president of a Southern College 
once met, while travelling before the war, 
the president of a Northern one, with whom 
he discussed matters relating to college disci- 
pline ; finally the Northern gentleman said 
that the thing which of course gave all persons 
in his position most trouble, — in comparison 
with which all other questions were trifling, — 
was how to deal with untruth, and asked how 
his new acquaintance treated cases of lying. lie 
expressed great amazement at hearing that the 
subject had never even come up for considera- 


170 A Hero's Last Days, 

tion, as a case had never occurred in the 
experience of his Southern friend.” 

“ That is also true of the South Carolina Col- 
lege,” said Godwyn. “ I heard it stated that 
there never had been an instance of a student’s i 
being detected in a falsehood. I believe the i 
fact is mentioned in Dr. Thornwell’s Discourse 
on Truth.” 

“Another tiling I fear from contact with the 
people of the North,” said Godwyn, “is that our 
people should learn their intense appreciation of I 
money and respect for wealth. In New York j 
life, riches seemed the only recognized distinc- 
tion between men. I visited, among my moth- j 
er’s old friends, several j)ersons who were highly ^ 
cultivated, — but everywhere I found the same 
tone, and T could only feel thankful for having 
been brought out of that atmosphere while I 
was yet a little child.” 

“ You were not then carried away with ad- 
miration for the mode of life in New York,” 
said Colonel Langdon, — “ like my son-in-law 
who came here, after a visit there, last year, 
confessing that everything at the South ap- 
peared to him dull, mean and sordid in com- 
parison ?” 

“ On the contrary,” said Godwyn, the “%shams 
that pervade life — at least in New York and | 


Or Nepenthe. 


171 


Washington — where the false-fronted buildings 
are typical of the whole constitution of society 
— were more depressing to me than the bare- 
ness one meets in Southern homes. Poverty 
assumes a more distressing aspect in that cli- 
mate, and I was, continually, and quite invol- 
untarily, brought into contact with cases more 
pitiful than any I have ever encountered at 
home. On behalf of some of these, I made 
several personal appeals to charitable organiza- 
tions, of the kind in which New York abounds. 
There was only one instance in which there 
was any disposition to even pay attentioi] to 
the application. I found the only method 
of really assisting individuals was by giving 
directly — precisely as we do in the South 
— where we have none of that extensive and 
expensive machinery of charity. My experi- 
ence may have been peculiarl}^ unfortunate; 
but the result was that I have come to regard 
all their charitable organizations — like the im- 
posing buildings connected with them — impos- 
ing in its bad sense — with profound distrust — 
almost with aversion. Much may be accom- 
plished in the liglitening of material distresses ; 
but there was a hardness of manner — and ap- 
parently of heart — about those connected with 
them — even the women— that was especially 


172 


A Hero's Last Days, 


shocking to me, among the strange experiences 
I had of New York. It seemed as if things 
conspired to give me an insight into the ‘ seamy- 
side ’ of Northern life, that all the hospitality 
which was shown to me could not counteract. 
I do not mean into the grosser aspects of vice 
— though these cannot be ignored by persons 
with any acuteness of perception — but into the 
tricks and dishonesty of business life. It is true, 
my chief experiences, in this connection, were 
with the callings of manufacturers and pub- 
lishers — for I had occasion to look into them 
in my capacity of inventor as well as of writer 
— but I have no reason to suppose other busi- 
nesses were conducted on higher principles. 
Understand — I do not mean petty dishonesty ; 
it seemed as if they compounded, by minute 
exactness in little matters, for ignoring the 
principles of right dealing.” 

“As to your experience with publishers,” 
said Colonel Langdon, “ since their whole busi- 
ness is founded on the piracy of British books, 
I can well believe that it is not conducted with 
a regard to honesty ; but, though the commer- 
cial character of their society may work together 
with the tendency of absolute democratic gov- 
ernments to foster corruption, — may not your 
view of things at th^ North have been coloured 


Or Nepeyithe. 


173 


by the condition of your health, last winter? 
You had, I believe, only lately recovered — 
when you went Northward — from a severe ill- 
ness, and your physical condition may have 
affected your impressions of things in general.” 

“It may be so,” said Godwyn, “and yet I 
was in that stage of recovery when the mind, 
regaining its tone, is apt to take a cheerful view, 
and I found something stimulating and exhil- 
arating about the atmosphere, at first. There 
was much that amused and interested me ; I 
was delighted with the scenery in the country, 
and the charm of early associations hung 
around the aspects of the cities, while the mode 
of life — even the hurry — seemed natural and 
familiar. It was only gradually that I was re- 
pelled by a closer insight into things. Still — 
even at the outset — I was, no doubt, in a curi- 
ously sensitive physical condition. Doctors 
have told me that mine is a highly nervous 
organization and there may be some connection 
between that fact and a strange impression I 
have occasionally found myself liable to — I 
cannot call it a delusion, for I am perfectly 
aware of the non-existence of what I am con- 
scious of perceiving at such times — of seeing — 
quite as distinctly as the real objects around 
me — another set, wholly different, — and as in- 

. 


174 


A Hero's Last Days, 


dependent of the will — so far as I am conscious 
— as the impressions produced on the senses by 
actual material realities. It is as if I saw other 
images through the real objects, which, in com- 
parison, appear shadowy and indistinct — 
though I am perfectly conscious of their reality 
— just as one sees two pictures in a dissolving 
view. I could relate two instances of the kind 
which happened shortly after my arrival at the 
North.” 

“ It must be something like the Scottish gift 
of second sight,” said Colonel Langdon. “ There 
are some curious mental phenomena connected 
with certain temperaments. I do not know 
that it is well to attach too much importance 
to them. But I should like to hear you de- 
scribe what you saw.” 

“When I was standing on the steps of the 
Capitol at Washington, for the first time,” said 
Godwyn, “I suddenly saw, in this manner, the 
whole of it, lying in a dazzling mass of ruins, 
while it was impressed on my mind that what 
I saw was a prevision of the aspect that, at 
some future time, would be presented by the 
remains of that building. This lasted but a 
few moments, and never recurred, though I re- 
visited the Capitol several times. I had an ex- 
actly similar experience, only of a more appall- 


Or Nepenthe. 175 

ing character, of being suddenly surrounded 
by a mass of ruins, stretching on all sides as 
far as the eye could reach, when, not long 
after, I was walking down Fifth Avenue in 
New York. This time, the appearance did not 
vanish quickly as the other had done, but con- 
tinued nearly the whole length of my walk, 
from 38th to 8th street, though I determined 
to treat it as a mere trick of the imagination, 
and walked steadily on, trying to divert my 
mind from it. In spite of myself, I could not 
get rid of a profound conviction that I was 
I looking into the future; I felt, too, an intense 
sadness and a desire that it might be possible 
to avert the calamity I foresaw, even by my 
own death. I have tried since, in vain, to 
argue myself out of an impression that I was, 
on these two occasions, the subject of prophetic 
visions, like those recorded of old.’’ * * 

“ Did the second experience ever recur ?” 

“ Never.” 

“ Both impressions may have been merely 
physical in their origin, owing to the state of 
your system.” 

“ I really would be glad to feel that they 

*Go(lwyn’s impressions of Northern Jife, and these 
peculiar experiences, were those of the writer, under 

• the circumstances related. 


176 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


were,” said Godwyn; but, even granting that 
they are not, — as I have said to ni3^self in rea- 
soning upon them, — why should I consider 
that coming desolation as more appalling than 
man}^ other things connected with human life 
in our time, which the mind is not formed to 
contemplate steadily ? Or than the conception 
of a final judgment? I have since dwelt less 
upon these things than perhaps I was intended 
to, — and I have related them merely- as an 
illustration of the attitude of mind I have been 
led to hold in regard to the Northern people. 
I feel no envy, on behalf of the South, for their 
prosperity, but only a profound melancholy, 
when I seriously reflect upon the whole struc- 
ture of their much-boasted civilization. We 
have been the victims of their false concep- 
tions of the nature of free government; but 
‘ they know not what they did,’ and I think the 
South may say to the North ‘ Thou couldst 
have no power at all against me, except it were 
given thee from above.’ At times I am not 
without hope that — if the Southern people can 
but rise to meet the divine opportunity — it will 
be granted to them, in the future, to ward off from 
the North the evils I see impending over it. I 
found this hope on no present appearance, of 
possibilities, but from confidence in the Su- 


Or Nepenthe. 


177 


preme Disposer of Events, who — I am per- 
suaded — affords to those who meet Plis will, 
such sublime opportunities, in due time.” 

“A beautiful hope, a beautiful faith!” said 
Colonel Langdon. “ Oh that it may be justi- 
fied!” 

Presently he said in a different tone: “ It is a 
difficult thing sometimes to judge ourselves, or 
I to say in what light the troubles that come 
upon us ought to be regarded. We may look 
upon ourselves as having atoned by kind treat- 
ment of the slaves for the horrors of the slave- 
trade, and maintain that the abuses of our sys- 
tem of slavery were grossly exaggerated and 
were not more flagrant than those to which all 
human relations have proved liable; but we 
mav nevertheless be being held to account for 
them.” 

“ It seems to me,” said Godwyn, “ that it 
would be fair to consider the present condition 
of affairs as permitted, in order to punish such 
things, if it was traceable, in the way of natu- 
ral consequence, to the workings of the institu- 
tion of slavery, instead of being, as it is, entirely 
I the result of outside interference with our State 
i constitutions, forcing the two races into politi- 
f cal antagonism.” 

• ' “It is true,” said Colonel Langdon, “ that 


178 


A Hero's Last Days, 


our chief troubles are the evils that absolute 
Democratic forms of government must produce 
everywhere, complicated by the existence of two 
races upon our soil; and not, ourselves, but the 
Northern people are primarily responsible for 
whatever, either now or hereafter, are the unfor- 
tunate results of universal suffrage at the 
South.” 

“ I cannot bring myself to believe,” said God- 
wyn, “ that we are being justly punished for 
injurious treatment of the negroes, nor do I 
think any candid mind, conversant with the 
facts, can believe it, when the status of that 
race, when they were freed, is compared with 
that in which we received them, and with that 
of the Africans. No ; there is such a thing as 
sacrificial sufferings — such are the sufferings of 
martyrs, .which are not to be regarded as the 
expiation of their former faults, but as the 
crown of their testimony to the truth. Know- 
ing ourselves not to be to blame for the pres- 
ent aspect of affairs., having done all we knew 
to avert it, I feel that we may rest in the though t 
that — as we are told that suffering is a high 
vocation — it may be that the South is — for some 
mysterious, high reason — called to it, as to a sac- 
rament.” 

“ It may be. It may be,” said Colonel Lang- 


Or Nepenthe. 


179 


don, in a tone that conveyed, “ How thank- 
fully would I acquiesce in the situation, if I 
could be assured of that !” 


CHAPTER X. 

“ License they mean, when they cry Liberty! 

For who loves that, must first be wise and good.” 

One of the regulations of Goethe’s imaginary 
brotherhood was, that the members, during the 
years of their apprenticeship, should never re- 
main more than three days with any set of sur- 
roundings, or any person. Jarno — the imper- 
sonation of cold intellectuality — is made to 
give the reason of this. Educated men, he in 
effect, says, soon explain themselves to each 
other; one soon exhausts all of novelty that 
another’s individuality can present, and, to 
avoid the terrible sensation of satiety, it is well 
to withdraw from each other’s society before its 
charm has departed ; nothing is endless, but 
inanity — a dreary sentence, truly indicating 
the vacuum in which scepticism finally lands, 
the human soul. 

But tlie acceptance of a positive belief is — in 


180 


A Heroes Last Days, 


proportion to its strength — a sure remedy 
against the deadly ennui with himself and 
others which attacks the sceptic ; and the effort 
to define, reconcile and apply the articles of a 
creed, held to by each, affords a continually 
fresh common interest for minds of even the’ 
highest cast. 

Colonel Langdon and Godwyn never reached 
the point of feeling that they had exhausted 
the subject upon which their discussions have 
been recorded ; when they left off talking; 
there was always more to be said. Yet, when 
Godwyn afterwards recalled their conversa- 
tions, there was but one connected one, besides 
those already recorded, which remained clearly 
in his recollection, stamped there, perhaps, by 
its being the last that occurred. 

It took place when he had been nearly five 
weeks at the Chalet, and grew — like the conver- 
sation related in the last chapter — out of one 
of the afternoon readings, which the study of 
Milton’s Latin and Italian poems, as well as his 
prose writings, still engaged. 

Colonel Langdon had been praising the no- 
bleness of his style. “Turn from him to any- 
thing in poetry, except Hamlet, and what a 
falling off in grandeur of moral tone you pres- 
ently become conscious of!” 


Or Nepenthe. 


181 


“ Not Wordsworth, Papa !” said Isabel. 

She never likes me to praise Milton,” ob- 
served her father, avoiding a direct reply. 

Those reflections upon women of poor old 
Agonistes will still keep rankling. She cannot 
pardon the advice to man to assert his 

i “ Despotic power, 

I O’er his female, in due awe, 

! Nor from that right, to bate one hour, 

. Smile she or lour.” 

“And, after all,” added Colonel Langdon, with 
I a sudden turn of humor, “ he did deserve a 
I crack on his old round head ' for that same.’ ” 

“ There is something in them of the hanker- 
! ing after an opportunity to pla}' the tyrant, 

I which was at the bottom of much of the puri- 
tan prating about liberty,” said Goodwyn. 

“ But the contempt he so often shows for wo- 
men is not my only reason for not liking Mil- 
ton,” said Isabel. “ I think he is very irrev- 
erent.” 

The third book of Paradise Lost borders on 
profanity, to my mind,” said Godwyn. 

“ Take care of injustice,” said Colonel Lang- 
don. “ If Milton was sometimes betrayed into 
over-familiarity, in dealing with sacred subjects, 
we cannot suspect him of real disregard for 
6 


182 


A Hero's Last Days, 


them. As for his iconoclasm, both in regard 
to kingship and the Church of England, as it 
existed in his day, there was a good deal of 
excuse for it.” 

“ Yet the spirit of iconoclasm seems as much 
opposed to the genius of poetry as to that of 
Christianity,” said Godwyn. “ Are they not 
both conservative in their very essence?” 

“ Not more than they are liberal in their 
very essence in another aspect,” said Colonel 
Langdon. “ Christianity counsels submission 
to established governments, as the representa- 
tives of Divinity; but where the government 
is recognized as a constitutional one, the spirit 
of loyalty to law, may itself, lead men into 
armed resistance. Yet a war, begun in defence 
of certain rights, often ends, as in the civil war 
in England, and in our own, in the overthrow 
of others, equally sacred. The whole scheme 
of our government, like that of Great Britain, 
since 1088 , rested upon the presumption of the 
right of the people to effect a revolution for 
themselves.” 

“ I often wonder,” said Godwyn, how future 
historians upon the Northern side, will recon- 
cile the theory which declared that the same 
number of States, in which the sentiment was 
nothing like as unanimous, had a right to 


Or Nepenthe. 


183 


change their government in 177(3, with that 
j which declares that the South had no right to 
I do it in 1860.” 

“ They never can be reconciled,” said Colonel 
I Langdon. “ But the right to secede was not ac- 
I cording to our theory a revolutionary right, 
j Indeed, though, as 1 have said, the whole scheme 
of the Ignited States Government originally 
rested upon the right of revolution, I have never 
been absolutely sure of its foundations. I be- 

I lieve, if I had lived in those days, I might have 
: been a Tory, like a great-uncle, whom you and 

I I have in common, who was one of the Royal 
Governors of South Carolina, and was — I have 

i been told — buried in Westminster Abbey, with a 
! laudatory inscription on account of his loyalty 
; during the Revolutionary War — instead of sid- 
i ing with my own grandfather — your great- 
I grandfather — who was a general in the Conti- 
hientalarmy. On the whole, I think that to 
,set out with the intention of revolutionizing a 
Igovernment is not a justifiable action ; though 
an attempt at reform may, upon the refusal of 
the opposing party, pass into a legitimate revo- 
lution. If the ‘ powers that be ’ are admitted as 
‘ ordained,’ a deliberate attempt to overthrow 
uni established government cannot be permis- 
sible.” 


184 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


“ The Northern people look upon secession 
as such an attempt,” said Godwyn. 

“ Whereas the triumph of the abolitionists 
was a revolution of the government which had 
been accomplished before we attempted to with- 
draw from connection with the North,” said 
Colonel Langdon. “ To change the character 
of the Union was, from the first, the avowed 
design of that party, in which they have thor- 
oughly succeeded. However, the authority of 
the Federal Government, as it now exists, is 
entirely established and recognized ; and — 
though the present form of the Union is as un- 
natural as a forced marriage — nothing can be 
clearer than that it is our duty to submit to its 
laws.” 

“ It is everywhere admitted,” said Godwyn. 

“ Yet we have not, perhaps, sufficiently shown | 
our disapproval of certain lawless organiza- 
tions,” said Colonel Langdon. “ Many disgrace- 
ful actions have been committed by these Ku- 
Klux Clubs.” I 

“ The outrages are absurdly exaggerated in 
number and political importance,” said God- 
wyn. “ Much about them has been pure in- 1 
vention to make political capital at the North, j 
I happened -to read in a New York paper whati 
professed to be an account of some occurrences 


Or Nepenthe, 


185 


ill the village where I have been residing — 
with the circumstances of which I am fully 
acquainted. I can only give an idea of the 
shock it gave me to peruse such a tissue of 
falsehood as these had been worked up into, by 
quoting Virgil’s oft-repeated Obstupui, etc. 
The fact is that these misrepresentations are so 
malicious that every denunciation of the Ku- 
( Klux from our people has been twisted into 
admissions of the worst charges made against 
our whole people; so that we are placed in a 
I difficult position in regard to these organiza- 
I tions. The law-abiding portion of the commu- 
^ nity have — at present — nothing whatever to do 
with the administration of law, and could onl}" 
check these outrages by counter organizations, 
equally lawless.” 

“ The present State governments are too in- 
herently weak to cope with the lawless element 
which was so beautifully held in check under 
our former constitutions,” said Colonel Lang- 
don ; “ but, however little fitted these govern- 
ments are to command respect, there can be no 
question as to its being our duty to uphold 
them in maintaining order and in any effort to 
restrain these disturbances.” 

“ They would be upheld in such an effort by 
. all decent people — indeed, there would not be 


186 


A Hero's Last Days, 


any serious resistance,” said Godwyn. “ But 
those in authority in our State will not be apt 
to make aii}^ effort of a determined character in 
any direction — they lack the moral, stamina. 
Then they are too busy plundering the State to 
have time for other things ; besides, the sym- 
pathy of the North is excited by their tales of 
persecutions endured by the negroes — and that 
sympathy is their great dependence for being 
able to maintain them.selves in power, so they 
rather desire that some colour should be given 
for their false reports of our people.” 

“ Meanwhile patience is our wisdom,” said 
Colonel Langdon. “ In reviewing the duties 
of the hour, it may be well to consider the prin- 
ciples which should govern our conduct in 
relation to unworthy persons who hold office 
either under the State or Federal departments 
of government. I know no writer who has so 
accurately defined the civil duties in general 
as Bishop Butler, in the discourse to which we 
referred in our first discussion of these topics. 
His remarks are particularly applicable to the 
point we are now considering — perhaps you 
will find the passages and read them out. They 
cannot be too deeply impressed upon the 
mind.” 

Godwyn accordingly found and read aloud 
the following passages : 


Or Nepenthe. 


187 


“ Civil liberty, the liberty of a eomnmiiity, is a severe 
and a restained thin"; implies in the notion of it au- 
thority, settled subordinations, subjections and obedi- 
ence, and is altogether as much hurt by too little of this 
kind, as by too much*(jf it. And the love of liberty, 
when it is indeed the love of liberty, which carries us to 
resist tyranny, will as much carry us to reverence au- 
thority and support it; for this most obvious reason, 
that one is as necessary to the very being of liberty as 
the other is destructive of it. And, therefore, the love 
of liberty, which does not produce this etiect, the love 
of liberty which is not a real principle of dutiful be- 
haviour towards authority, is as hypocritical as the 
religion which is not productive of a good life.” 

“But government, as distinguished from mere power, 
free government, necessarily implies reverence in the 
subjects of it for authority, or power regulated by laws, 
and an habit of submission to the subordinations of 
civil life throughout its several ranks : nor is a people 
capable of liberty without somewhat of this kind. But 
it must be observed, and less surely cannot be observed, 
that reverence and submission will at best be very pre- 
carious, if it be not founded on a sense of authority 
being God’s ordinance, and the subordinations in life a 
providential appointment of things.” 

' “Since men cannot live out of society, nor in it with- 
out government, government is plainly a divine ap- 
pointment ; and, consequently, submission to it a most 
evident duty of the law of nature.” 

“Now if we really are under any obligations of duty 
to magistrates at all, honour and respect in our be- 
haviour towards them must be their due.' And they 


188 


A Hero’s Last Days. 


who refuse to pay tliein this small and easy regard, who 
despise dominion and speak evil of dignities, should seri- 
ously ask themselvts what restrains them from any 
other instance of undutifulness ? And if it be principle, 3 
w^hy not from this ? Indeed, free government supposes j 
that the conduct of affairs may be enquired into, and | 
spoken of, with freedom. But be it done as it will, it is 
a very different thing from libelling and endeavouring 
to vilify the persons of such as are in authority. It will 
be hard to find an instaixce in which a serious man 
could calmly satisfy himself in doing this. It is in no 
case necessary, and in every case of a pernicious ten- 
dency.” . 


“ I have been^ struck lately,” said Godwyn, 
after he had finished these extracts, “ with the 
curious resemblance of Calhoun’s style to But- 
ler’s. In both, there is a grave, simple direct- 
ness that conveys the intense conviction on the 
part of the writers of the truth of what they 
are setting forth.” 

“ Calhoun was profoundly in earnest in all 
things,” said Colonel Langdon, “ and it is not 
possible to any one who knew him to imagine 
his imitating any style; but his mode of 
thought may have been coloured by the Anal- 
ogy. He studied it continually. I do not know 
whether he was acquainted with these dis- 
courses.” . 

‘‘ How wonderfully forcible his Essay on 
Government is ! ” said Godwyn. “ Every state- ^ 


Or Nepenthe. 


189 


merit seems to me to carry conviction, so that 
it would appear impossible for it either to be 
controverted or misunderstood.” 

“ And yet Calhoun has been very little un- 
derstood,” said Colonel Langdon. “ To present 
the man and his ideas as they should be pre- 
sented, would be a noble literary task. By the 
way, you could set yourself at nothing which — 
if successful — would be so useful as such a 
work, to the outside world, as well as to the 
South. In his writings, suggestions are to be 
found which would assist those now labouring 
at the problems presented by governmental 
affairs everywhere.” 

“ If ever the opportunity for such a work is 
given me,” said Godwyn, “ I pledge myself to 
do my best. But do you know, sir, you have 
very much shaken my confidence in my own 
ability to effect anything ?” 

‘‘How so?” 

“ Because, as we have talked, I have per- 
ceived that the field of thought in which I sup- 
posed myself a pioneer, was already familiar to 
you.” 

“It is true, I had discussed these subjects be- 
fore/’ said . Colonel Langdon, smiling at the 
young man’s ingenuousness, “but you have 
.succeeded — against my expectation — in pre- 


190 


A Herd's Last Days, 


senting them to me under new aspects. Let 
me say to you, in all seriousness, that T feel I 
owe to you no little thaiiks for having helped 
to clear for me a new avenue to hope. I had 
not thought it possible for a ray to fall on the 
gloom that involved the political outlook, but 
your theory does seem to bring this depart- 
ment of human affairs within the province of 
those two heavenly allies, faith and hope.” 

As Colonel Langdon said this, in a tone of 
deep earnestness, Isabel turned upon Godwyn a 
bright affectionate look, as innocently confiding 
as that of a child, conveying her delight at her 
father’s acknowledgment. The moment stood 
out strongly in his memory ever afterwards, — 
the more so, perhaps, because it presented a 
vivid contrast with that other occasion, on 
which she had turned away, in tears, at the 
close of that first conversation upon these 
topics. 

It was indeed a triumph for him. During 
these discussions he had sometimes been con- 
scious of mortification at finding arguments 
which he had been in the habit of considering 
conclusive, treated as if the}" by no means de- 
cided the question in hand. He had felt the 
review of his positions beneficial to his own 
mind ; in defining them for another, much had 


1 

t 


I 


Or Nepenthe. 


191 


been shaped into consistent form which liad 
been but vaguely outlined before; he really un- 
derstood his own position more clearly in con- 
sequence. And now came the hour when it 
was admitted by a clear-headed critic to have 
stood the test of his scrutiny. It had been 
given to him — as to Hopeful in the old allegory 
— to aid a maturer spirit than his own in its 
! struggle with despair. 

j But there was yet a sweeter triumph for him 
* in this moment, — he felt a sudden conviction 
that it would have been impossible for Isabel 
to have bestowed such a look as she had just 
given him, upon any man, unless she loved 
him ; nor coidd he ever recall that glance, dur- 
ing the doubts and discouragement of after 
experiences, without a returning sense of ela- 
tion and assurance. 

“ I cannot tell you, sir, what it is to me — ” 
he began, in answer to Colonel Langdon, and 
broke off, in one of his attacks of stammering. 

“ If he could get rid of that difficulty, he 
would have the making of an orator in him !” 
i thought Colonel Langdon. 

And yet that stammer was not without an 
' insinuating attractiveness of its own, and was 
1 one of the means by which, unconsciously to 
1 herself, Godwyn had been winding himself into 


192 A Hero's Last Days, 

Isabel’s heart. To her, as to all true-hearted 
Southern women, a much worse blemish would 
have seemed no blemish, if she found in it a 
proof of devotion to the “lost cause”; and this 
defect might even be felt to plead eloquently in 
behalf of her lover when the time came for 
him to tell his tale — a time nearer at hand than 
either of them guessed. 

Godwyn’s sentence never was finished, for 
John Langdon entered the room, just then, 
holding in his hand a package of letters and 
papers which had just been brought from 

A . The first letter opened, contained the 

news that the situation as college librarian had 
been secured for Godwyn, and closed with a re- 
quest that he would lose no time in entering 
upon the duties of the office. 

John Langdon, as it happened, had already 

made arrangements for going to A with I 

his waggon on the day after the next. It, of I 
course, suggested itself that Godwyn might ac- | 
company him, — though rriuch regret was ex- i 
pressed at the necessity for this early departure. 
The reader, who may remember that Godwyn 
had resolved to put his fate to the touch upon | 
receipt of this intelligence, can easily imagine . 
that the approach to this crisis excited him 
greatly. It was difficult for him to fix his at- 


193 


Or Nepenthe. 

tention on anything else; and he was silent and 
distrait the rest of the evening. 

His little pet, Una, gave wa}" to a burst of 
tears when she heard of his impending de- 
parture. After tea, when all were gathered, as 
usual, around the fire-place in the hall, she was 
not to be . lured from her place on his knee, 
while she remained unusually quiet, and only 
one or two remarks, which it was afterwards 
sweet to him to remember — for he had con- 
tracted a deep affection for the child — showed 
that she was dwelling in her thoughts upon 
things connected with him. 

‘‘ What is Nepenthe, Alfred ?” she suddenly 
said — as it appeared to most of them — k propos 
of nothing, but causing him to direct a quick 
glance at Isabel, who immediately cast down 
her eyes with a blush. 

“You know the story in the Fairy Queen?” 
he replied vaguely. 

“Yes,” said she: “about the two sets of 
brothers who fought till only one on each side 
was left alive, and then they gave them Ne- 
penthe to drink, to make them friends. But 
what does Nepenthe mean?” 

“ It may mean different things,” said God- 
wyn, — then, observing that Colonel Langdon 
was listening to what was passing between him- 


194 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


self and the child, he said to him : “That is a 
beautiful part of the allegory, sir, is it not? 
Nepenthe, the drink of the gods — that is the 
divine way of looking at things — enabling 
men to over-live their old hatreds and sor- 
rows T 

“A high conceiDtion !” said Colonel Langdon. 
“ I could wish it might be granted to the North 
and the South to drink of it.” 

“It may be that it can be partaken of by a 
few in behalf of the rest,” said Godwyn. 

“ If so, I would greatly desire to be permitted 
to be one of those few,” said Colonel Langdon. 
“ Do you know that I feel as if you had, dur- 
ing these weeks, been holding that cup to my 
lips ?” 

The young man’s heart was full tliat night 
as he thought of all these things. Hope was 
high in him, and the prospect of congenial 
work was sufficiently pleasant to make him, 
feel that the winter would soon be got through. 
He had already promised to return the follow- 
ing summer, to pass the vacation at the Chalet; 
and in bright imaginings of what might then 
be brought to pass, he could forget the inter- 
vening space. 

He planned his winter’s work. He would 
now be free to devote much time to the tasks 


Or Nepenthe. 


195 


to which he had consecrated himself. Might 
liis success in rekindling the spark of hope in 
• the heart of this lonely sage and hero, who had 
been suffered to go without light for a time in 
more senses than one, be a pledge of what he 
might accomplish later for the country ! What 
might he not have the heart to undertake, if 
he could succeed in winning that lovely crea- 
ture tg share his life? Then he resolved that 
she should be won. 

1 But there was much to be gone through be- 

I fore this was to be fulfilled. 

How far apart seemed his thoughts during 
that night from those of the afternoon! The 
excitement attendant upon the revelation of a 
passionate first love, from calm reflections upon 
duties owed to opponents in politics! Yet the 
higher moods of the mind are not really inhar- 
monious; and afterwards he often felt that it 
was well for him that all his earliest associa- 
tions with his love were so involved with the 
remembrance of the subject upon which he 
had conversed with the blind man, that he 
could never disengage them from each other 
in his thoughts, — hope, faith and love — for his 
state were intertwined in his heart with their 
counterparts in his individual life. 


CHAPTER XI. 


“ For Love himself takes part against himself 
To warn us off, and Duty, loved of Love — 

O, this world’s curse — beloved but hated — came 
Like Death betwixt thy dear embrace and mine” j 
[Love and Duty.— Tennyson. ; 

Godwyn carefully settled the plan of his op- j 
erations upon the morning of the following j 
day. The peculiarly close relations between 
Isabel and her father, as well as the old-fash- 
ioned ideas of etiquette in which the young 
man had been trained, demanded that a special 
deference should be paid to Colonel Langdon 
in this matter ; but his infirmity made the talk 
of explanation seem no easy one, when, a little 
after breakfast, when no one else but Mrs. Lang- 
don happened to be in the room, Godwyn pre- 
ferred his request to speak to Colonel Langdon , 
for a little while in the library, "where the blind 
man immediately went with him. 

Mrs. Langdon was not without suspicions as j 
to the subject of their conference; nor was she 
allowed to remain long in uncertainty about it. j 
She overheard Godwyn leaving the library, 
after a not very lengthy interview, and, a little ] 


Or Nepenthe. 197 

after, her father called her to him. Upon her 
joining him, he informed her — in the manner 
of a person disclosing what is expected to cause 
great surprise — of Godwyn’s having asked his 
consent to pay his addresses to Isabel. 

“Johnny and I have suspected that he was 
thinking of it, for some time,” she said. 

“ Indeed ! Well, after all, I suppose it is but 
the natural consequence of the situation. But 
I declare to you, I should as soon have thought 
of his undertaking to write sonnets to Amy’s 
eyebrow as to her’s ! This is what comes of hav- 
ing to keep one’s eyes shut, perforce. But what 
do you think ? Has she any fancy for him ?” 

She replied that she was not sure Isabel cared 
for him, much surprised at her father’s cheer- 
fulness which she had not penetration enough 
to discover was forced. Her thoroughly wo- 
manly temperament would have been ready to 
lend itself in sympathy to almost any love 
affair; but she was almost as dependent upon 
Isabel as her father, and the idea of her mar- 
riage came like a shock, it would be the uproot- 
ing of the chief pillar of the household. 

“ How old do you say she is, twenty?” — asked 
her father, while she was becoming more and 
more distressed at the contemplation of the 
possibility which* she had not actually realized 


198 A Heroes Last Days, 

before, tlioiigh, as she had said, it had been dis- 
cussed with her privately by her brother— “old 
enough to know her own mind, then I” 

“ She generally does,” said Annie, “She has 
a great deal Of sense.” 

“ She will not show a want of it, if she ac- 
cepts him. I think him a fine-tempered man, 
quite suited to make a woman happy, though 
he is not very' well oft*.” 

“Would you wish her to marry him. Papa?” 

“ You appear, from your tone, to be thinking 
it would be a very distressing thing. My child, 
marriage, except for the two concerned, is not 
an affair that an affectionate family can feel 
very joyful over. Of course, it will be hard to 
part Avith her — in such cases there are always 
sacrifices to be made ; but not more than we 
ought to be willing to make for her happiness.” 

Colonel Langdon Avas not unaware of what 
his share of the sacrifices must be ; but he really 
thought the engagement Avould be for Isabel’s 
happiness, and kneAV that it would be more 
easily brought about if he could manage to 
have himself kept entirely out of sight of the 
matter. He kneAV that the vieAV his eldest 
daughter would take, might be largely infiu- 
enced by his manner on this occasion, and it 
did have its effect. 


199 


Or Nepenthe. 

“ We ought not to be selfish,” she said, as if 
she was beginning to entertain the possibility 
of the marriage — from which, with women of 
of her stamp, the transition is sometimes rapid 
to becoming desirous of a match they had be- 
gun by opposing. 

“ It is strange, — if anything comes of it, that 
is, — to think of his mother’s having taken such 
a fancy to Isabel’s picture long ago,” said she 
presently. “ Only think, — they would be her 
own initials that are on it.” 

“ As if there had been something drawing 
her feeling towards the child, poor soul !” said 
Colonel Langdon. “ Godwyn will like hearing of 
that. We must tell him of it. By the way, it 
is just as well that he applied to me in time 
to prevent my giving the children holiday, in 
consideration of its being the last day of his 
visit, as I had thought of doing, — if I had they 
would have dogged his footsteps the whole day, 
and that might not have been very conve- 
nient. Now, they will be free from them for a 
few hours, at least.” And he made his way to the 
pinery, where his little scholars had been for 
the last quarter of an hour awaiting him. It 
was evident that he had fully made up his 
mind that Isabel would accept the offer about 
to be made to her. 


200 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


Mrs. Langdon had not quite reached that ‘ 
point yet, and her manner was a little colder 
than it need have been, when, going into the 
hall again, she found Godwyn there with Isabel, 
and he eagerly appealed to her to persuade her 
sister to take a walk with him. It was his last 
day, he pleaded. 

“ You know, Annie, I have some work to do 
with you for the little boys,” said Isabel, a little 
confusedly. 

Mrs. Langdon, of course, declared that any 
time would do as well. Godwyn must have 
perceived that she did so with constraint ; for, 
while Isabel, who had no further excuse to i 
offer, had gone for her hat, he stepped up to 
her and — in a half whisper, and his most per- 
suasive stammer — hoped “ she was not very 
aiigry with him.” She could not help replying j 
kindly, and presently found herself relating the 
history of the locket to him. Her heart was ! 
wholly melted when she found that the young I' 
man actually had tears in his eyes, as he | 
thanked her for telling him of this — again in ! 
that broken stammer — would it be possible that 
Isabel would have strength to resist its power? j 

“ He is a very affectionate person,” she j 
thought, after she had presently seen the two 
fairly off together. “ She would certainly be j 


Or Nepenthe. 201 

happy with him — we will have to make up our 
minds to losing her.” 

Isabel had appeared perfectly at her ease on 
her return to the halh He need not have 
meant anything particular by merely asking 
her to go to walk, she had said to herself. The 
Lodge, to which he had proposed walking, was 
a pretty stone cottage, the most picturesquely 
situated of the unoccupied houses in the settle- 
ment — what more natural than that he should 
wish to see it again ? And if Amy and Una 
had not been at their lessons, no doubt he 
might have proposed their going with him. 
She would not be silly. 

“ I am glad you chose to go to the Lodge,” 
she said. 

“ I thought you seemed particularly fond of 
the place,” he said. It had, in fact, been the 
point towards which the whole family had 
walked together, at Isabel’s suggestion, on a 
certain Sunday afternoon lately. On that oc- 
casion, struck with her feeling for it, he had, in 
his thoughts, gone so far as to make a sort of 
vow to himself that he would hereafter make 
the place his own, if she could be brought to 
consent to make a home for him there, and he 
had found, on enquiring of John Langdon, 
that it could be bought now for a mere song. 


202 


A Heroes Last Days, 


quite within his reach. It was with some 
vague idea of telling her this, that he had pro- 
posed this direction for their walk. 

“ It is like a second home to me,” she said. 
“You see. Major Lee, to whom it used to be- 
long, — an old bachelor friend of papa’s — made 
a pet of me, when I was a child. I used to be 
continually running over there. I know all 
the tables and chairs in the house, and have a 
sort of personal feeling for them, just as I have 
for those at the Chalet.” 

This speech might have been made into an 
opening for what he had to say ; but he had 
not yet fully collected his powers. Isabel began 
talking of her old friend, relating anecdotes, 
which, at another time, he would have found 
entertaining, but now hardly attended to. Ills 
answers became short and his tones full of 
suppressed earnestness. Isabel was becoming 
strangely fli\ttered ; but some instinct made 
her avoid letting the conversation drop. At 
last he mentioned his wish that he could buy 
the Lodge. 

“ That would be nice,” she said. “ Then we 
would always have you for a neighbour, — in 
the summers at least ; for I suppose you would 
hardly care to pass the winters here. It 
would be so pleasant for Papa. I have been 


Or Nepenthe. 203 

tliinking liow he will miss these talks with 
yon"' 

“And you ? Will you miss me at all ? ” 

■ “ Oh ! I ? — That does not matter,” she said, 
almost under her breath. “ But papa, — before 
you came, there was no one that he could really 
converse with. Johnny, you know, does not 
care for the same sort of things — I mean to talk 



to me. All I know is really learnt from him, 
and I can only echo his own thoughts. It is 
only since you came — that is, it is only lately — 
that I seem to have learnt that there can be 
two ways of thinking about a subject. It 
would make me much more of a companion if 
I thought for myself ; and, after you are gone, 
I mean to try and develop a little individuality 
I of thought. But I know I cannot take your 
I place. Your visit* has done a great deal for 
i him.” 

“ And for me ! ” exclaimed Godwyn. “ Do 
you know what it has been ? It is more than I 
can ever tell, — but a little like being the Bed 
Cross Knight, healing from his wounds in the 
House of Charity.” 

“ Papa says the poets are knights of these 
days.” 

“ Let me be your knight.” 


204 


A Heroes Last Days, 


She looked at him for a moment with a 
little of Una’s archness. 

“ Johnny would say we were getting into the 
heroics,” she said with a soft little laugh, — per- 
haps to cover shyness. 

Her habitual manner being graver than is 
usual, Godwyn had never actually heard her 
laugh before. The sound had an intoxicating 
sort of effect upon him ; the intensity of the 
admiration he felt, carried him out of him- 
self, and he felt the power for which he had 
been waiting, to control his defective speech ; 
for — far from counting, as he might have done, 
upon its attractiveness — he had had a nervous 
dread beforehand, of his stammering propen- 
sity, and had therefore thought over and 
prepared the words he wushed to use in de- 
claring himself. 

“ Listen to me now,” he said. 

She looked at him and encountered the sort 
of gaze which had, once or twice before, made 
her blush. She blushed now, and her laughter 
died away. 

“ Here we are at the gate of the Lodge,” she 
said, hurriedly. “ Shall we go in ?” 

“ Stay here a little,” he said, “ till you have 
heard what I brought you out to tell you.” 

Then, as she stood still, with her hand on 


Or Nepodlie. 


205 


the latch of the gate, he began ]iis tale in al- 
most the words he had prepared — very simple 
ones — giving an account of the dream he had 
had upon the night of his arrival, in which 
she had taken up the strain his mother had 
dropped ; to which he added that, from time 
to time, he had felt that — if his life was ever 
to be set to music again — it must be by her 
hand. Afterwards, in recalling it all, Isabel 
thought no woman could ever have been wooed 
more sweetly; but, at the moment, she scarcely 
seemed to take in what he said. ^ 

“ So now you know,” he concluded, “ what I 
brought you out to hear.” 

“ If I had thought you meant it,” she said, 
in an agitated tone, “ I would not have come. 
Indeed, I never dreamed you would tell me 
such a thing so-so suddenly.” 

“ How could I have left without an answer 
from you ?” he said — “ only one word ! But 
don’t tell me it is not to be the one I wisli !” 

“ It cannot be,” said she, speaking more col- 
lectedly. “ You must forget that you ever told 
me this, as I mean to forget it.” 

‘‘You have not had time to think! I have 
taken you by surprise.” 

“Yes; you have taken me by surprise. And 
yet — I will not hide it from you — I have 


206 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


thought once or tivice, and last night I thought 
it again, that some of these days you would 
say something like this to me — and I made up 
my mind that it could not be as you wish.” 

It was evident that she thoroughly meant 
what she said. At the first moment, no thought 
of resisting her decision occurred to him. He 
turned cpiite pale, hut said not_a word, aloud. 
Inwardly he was saying to himself, “I must 
bear it like a man.” 

He was conscious too— as people sometimes 
are in moments of intense mental trouble— that 
all things around him, the aspect of the cot- 
tage, the neglected rose-bushes in which it was 
half-hidden, the pattern of the gate which Isa- 
bel had opened, had stamped themselves in his 
brain forever. 

“ I — I think we will not go in,” Isabel sud- 
denly said, turning around in the direction of 
the Chalet, and shutting the gate. 

In his over-wrought mood, lie had a sort of 
feeling that tlie action was symbolical, — it was 
the gate of Paradise that was being shut — a 
Paradise she had refused to enter with him. 
However, as she walked away, it swung open 
again. It might be folly to accept it as an 
omen, but hope returned to him at that mo- 
ment. Her voice, he reflected, had been un- 


Or Nepenthe. 


207 


steady in that last sentence, — in an instant, he 
was by her side in the homeward path she 
had taken. 

“ You say it cannot be as I wish,” he said. 
“Is it that you cannot care for me?” 

She made no answer. 

“ If you do not now, yet some day you 
may,” he said ; “ I can wait for that. Will you 
not say that I may?” 

Still she made no answer, and he began to 
perceive, though her face was hidden under 
her large round hat, that she was shedding 
tears. Just at this instant, in a turn of the 
path, they suddenly encountered John Lang- 
don, so that it was impossible to avoid him, as 
he, not knowing anything of what had been 
going on, exclaimed : “ Oh! here you are, God- 
wyn ! I was just looking for you to propose 
going after some, pheasants that have been 
drumming on the mountain this morning.” 

“ Please don’t follow me. I cannot talk any 
more just now,” Isabel found voice enough to 
say, in an undertone to Godwyn, and then 
passed quickly on towards the Chalet, keeping 
her face from her brother, who —perceiving 
something out of the way — made no attempt 
to stop her. 

Godwyn could not follow her against her 


208 A Heroes Last Days, 

wishes, and was thus left alone with John 
Langdon. 

“ Well, do you care to go after the pheas- 
ants?” said the latter, presently, in a manner 
that showed he meant to ignore anything sin- 
gular in the rencontre. 

“ I may as well tell you, Johnny, what has 
happened. Your sister has just refused an 
offer from me.” 

“ What ! Why, I declare I had thought,” — 
and he checked himself. 

“ You had thought I had some chance with 
her ?” said Godwyn, eagerly. “ What made 
you think so?” 

“ Well, I hardly know. Little indefinite 
things made me fancy she liked you.” 

John Langdon was a shrewd observer in 
many things, as Godwyn knew. This opinion 
was, therefore, an encouragement to him, to 
believe that Isabel might be induced to change 
her decision. He soon succeeded in persuad- 
ing himself that the close of the interview had 
left her answer still indefinite. The next step 
was to induce Johnny to persuade Isabel to 
grant him another hearing. It was agreed 
between them, without much difficulty, that 
Godwyn should wait where he was, while 
his friend was sent on this mission to the 
house, where he was delayed some time. 


Or Nepenthe. 209 

Finding that Isabel had betaken herself to 
her own room, her brother followed her to the 
door, and, after a little delay, during which 
she had gotten rid of the traces of the tears, 
the thought of which had been such encour- 
agement to Godwyn,.she let Johnny in. He 
told her Godwyn would not take her answer as 
final. 

“ Then,” said she, ‘‘ you must make him un- 
derstand that I cannot change. I would rather 
not see him again.” 

He argued quite earnestly on his friend’s 
behalf, waxing almost eloquent in his praises, 
telling her she did not know what she was do- 
ing in refusing a man like that. 

It is not merely that he is clever,” he said. 
‘‘ He is the very best fellow that I have ever met. 
I learned to know what he was in prison. There 
is not another man I know whom I could com- 
pare with him.” 

I know it,” — and she suddenly burst into 
tears ; whereby he was convinced that his sus- 
picions that she returned Godwyn’s affection, 
were correct. 

“ But what use is it to speak of what he is?” 
she cried. “I cannot alter what I said, not 
even, — no, not even if it was to break my heart. 
But it will not do that. It would be the giving 


210 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


up Papa, that would really break it; for I 
love him best, — indeed, Johnny, I do. I did 
not know it would be so hard when I made up 
my mind, last night, that I must choose be- 
tween them ; but that does not alter the right 
and the wrong. If I let myself be persuaded 
into leaving Papa, I could never be happy. 

It would kill me, I believe, to think of it after- 
wards.” 

“ But my father would not wish to stand in 
the way.” 

Oh, he must not know anything about this !” 

“ He knows already. Godwyn told me he 
had spoken to him this morning.” 

Johnny agreed, however, that, if she persist- 
ed in her rejection of Godwyn, Colonel Lang- 
don should not be made aware that the thought j 
of him had influenced her decision. The \ 
thought of it would be sure to make him un- 
happy, unless his authority prevailed to pre- 
vent Isabel’s making the sacriflce; and her 
earnestness convinced her brother that either 
she would not yield, even to her father himself, 
or that it would not be for her happiness event- 
ually, if she did yield. At any rate, there must 
be a most painful contest of feeling, if he were 
permitted to know tlie truth ; and it soon ap- 
peared clear to John Langdon that this would 


Or Nepenthe. 


211 


only cause useless pain, and had better be 
avoided. Afterwards it seemed as if the course 
chosen to spare his father, had resulted in a 
more unhappy manner to Colonel Langdon 
himself, than the alternative could have done. 

“What! She will not see me again?” said 
Godwyn, when John Langdon at last returned, 
his grave looks indicating that the result of his 
mission had not been favorable to his wishes. 

“Yes; if you insist upon it. I told her I 
thought she owed you as much as that,” replied 
Langdon. “ But, my dear fellow, I have come 
to think myself it would be better for you to 
let it alone. I think she wont change what she 
has said ; and, I must tell you, I begin to see 
she was right. My father could never get on 
without her. I did not, at first, sufficiently 
consider him in the matter.” 

“ Is that her only reason for having nothing 
to say to me? You must tell me, Johnny.” 

“Well! There, — I think it is. I did not 
mean to tell you — but I can’t bear to see you 
so cut up.” 

I Godwyn begged him to go back and tell Isa- 
bel that he had not dreamed of her being sep- 
arated from her father. 

“You mean he might live with you?” said 
Langdon, doubtfully. “ It is a kind thought 


212 


A Heroes Last Days, 


on your part, Godwyn ; but I don’t think that 
arrangement would answer. I don’t think any 
of us could consent to it, even if my father 
would himself. Perhaps it is best to talk plainly. 
It is just possible that, if he thought Isabel’s 
happiness depended on her marrying you, and 
she would not do it, if it separated her from 
him, my father might allow^ himself to live wdth 
you — w^hich w^ould amount to living upon 
you ; hut it w^ould he a- false position for him, 
and I, for one, could not bear to have it even 
proposed to him ” 

Godwyn’s face showed that he felt deeply 
hurt by these words. 

“ There ! I have vexed you wdth my plain- 
ness,” said Langdon. “ I did not mean it the 
least in the wmrld. But even if you w^ere a rich 
man — ” 

Godwyn began to demonstrate that, as the 
times went, he wms rather better off than most 
young men. He had not had quite enough in- 
come of his own to live upon, still wdiat he 
had, added to the librarian’s salary, w’ould 
be more than most people married on, now-a- 
days. Also, there w^ere remnants of his grand- 
father’s property, wdiich, although yielding no 
returns since the w^ar, he had been assured 
might be expected to do so again. 


213 


Or Nepenthe. 

“ But, I was saying that, even if you were a 
rich man, it would make no difference in my 
objecting to letting my father become a burden 
on you,” said Langdon. “See how it is: you 
would never consent to such an arrangement in 
my place.” 

“ I do not see why not,” said Godwyn. “ It 
appears to me a sort of thing which would be 
felt to be natural or painful, entirel}^ according 
to the feelings existing between those who were 
about to form a new connection. I have no 
other ties, and I do not believe the feeling I al- 
ready have for your father differs much from 
that of a son, — there is more of reverence in it, 
I will confess to you, than I have ever felt for 
my own father. Why should I not be allowed 
the full rights, if I have the feelings of a 
son ?” 

“ It might be all very well that a son-in-law 
should take the place of a son, if there were no 
real son in the case,” said Langdon. “ But 
while I lived, I could never feel it right that 
any one else should undertake the support of 
my father.” 

“ Surely it would be for him to decide if he 
were willing to live with another of his chil - 
dren.” 

“ Well, — you will have to lay the proposition 


214 


A Hero's Last Days, 


before him yourself, if you can get Isabel to 
consent to it ; for I could not bring myself to 
mention it to him. But I am sure that she will 
see the matter in the same light that I do,” 

“ You promised I was to see her again.” 

“If you insist, yes; I will arrange for that . 
this afternoon.” 

“ And you will tell her now what I have 
said?” 

“ Yes — but I tell you it will make no differ- 
ence.” 

“ But you won’t tell her you are opposed to 
my proposal that your father should live with 
her? You might let her judge, Johnny, with- 
out biassing her against it.” 

“ Now, old fellow, you are asking too much. 
The more I consider, the more I object to that 
arrangement, — and I shall have to tell her so.” 

Godwyn felt that his taking this ground 
would make his own task of bringing Isabel to 
look upon the matter in what he considered the 
right light, very much more difficult. They 
argued the point a long time, without either 
changing his opinion in the least. Each at 
heart acknowledged the fine feeling and manli- 
ness of the other. They were both men of fine 
temper, and a serious misunderstanding be- 
tween them was not likely to be of long con- 


215 


Or Nepenthe. 

tinuance; but Godwyn was high-strung, and to 
have his generous intentions rejected, angered 
him at last ; he accused his friend of “ pig- 
lieadedness,” and — thougli that and one or two 
other hard expressions were apologized for — the 
interview was never very })leasant for either to 
remember. 

Langdon went,- afterwards, to tell Isabel of 
Godwyn’s proposition in regard to his father, 
as he had promised ;*he also undertook to tell 
his father and elder sister that Isabel had 
agreed to give Godwyn another hearing, with- 
out further explanation. Godwyn felt that this 
was both kind and considerate, after what had 
passed, and tried to content himself with going 
over and over in his mind the arguments he 
meant to make use of with Isabel in the after- 
noon. 

Colonel Langdon did not appear suspicious 
, of Isabel’s reasons for not accepting Godwyn’s 
offer. He observed to his son that there was 
no accounting for women’s taste in such mat- 
ters; but he had always thought that freedom 
of choice should be as perfect as possible; that, 
after all, it might not have been prudent for 
them to have married at once, and long en- 
gagements were to be dreaded. Yet he express- 


A Herd's Last Hays, 


21 G 

ed a wish to see lier alone, just before the second 
interview with Godwyn, which, it had been 
arranged, should take place in tlie pinery after 
dinner, — John Langdon taking some pains to 
contrive that it should not be interrupted b}'' 
the children, whom he lured off in search of 
chestnuts, to be presented as parting gifts to 
Godwyn. 

“ Little daughter ” — when Isabel had come 
to him. Colonel Langdon said, in an exceed- 
ingly affectionate manner, with an attempt at 
playfulness — “ I ho])e you understand that 
papa is very willing to spare you — good child 
as you have been — if you feel that ‘the right 
one’ has come along.” 

“ Yes, papa, — of course you are longing to 
get rid of me.” She had succeeded in making 
her tone as playful as his own, and his suspi- : 
cions were lulled. 

“ My child, you know better than that. But | 
are you sure you know your own mind ? Have 
you not decided too hastil}^ ? ” 

“ Bapa, 1 have thought well over it. I could 
not make any answer than the one I made this 
morning. 1 am only going to repeat it. There 
is no use, really, in ni}^ seeing him again, — only 
Johnny thought it was better, to make him 
understand clearly that 1 meant what I said.” 


O)' Nepenthe. 


217 


He said no more, struck with the calm 
resolution indicated by her tone. This crisis 
had developed the force of character hidden in 
this gentle and womanly nature, unformed in 
some respects, but trained in habits of self-ab- 
negation. 

Her manner afterwards with Godwyn was far 
more collected than it had been in the morn- 
ing. On the other hand, he was much bolder; 
her very calmness incited him to do his utmost 
to force at least some recognition that he had 
power with her. He ventured on impassioned 
pleadings and even reproaches for her cold- 
heartedness; at last, seeing her eyes fill with 
tears at this, he suddenly caught her in his 
arms. 

“ You do love me! ” he cried, and kissed her 
more than once; but, seeing her pale and trem- 
bling, let her go and entreated pardon. 

“ You had no right,” she said, flushing and 
paling. 

“ Forgive it. If you had even once said you 
did not care for me, I would not have dared,” 
said he. Say it now, and I will trouble you 
no more.” 

But though she would not deny, she could 
not be brouglit to acknowledge that she loved 
him. He could gain nothing more than “ It 
7 


218 


A Hero’s Last Days, 


cannot be as yon wish/’ repeated in various 
forms. He had not even an opportunity of 
api>roaching the subject of his arguments with 
Johnny, until at last she said, ‘‘ I will never 
give any one claims over me above papa.” 

“ Johnny told you what I said ? ” 

“Yes; but it cannot be. Now T must go. 
Indeed, there is no use for me to talk with you 
longer ” — and she rose. 

“ How if he no longer needed 3mu? — if he 
were to gain his eyesight again ? ” 

“ Then — I cannot tell.” 

“ Then I will never give you up.” 

He caught her hand and kissed it — she drew 
it away and was leaving without a word. 

“ Ah, you are angry, — but don’t go without 
forgiving me.” 

“ No, — I am not angry. But there must be 
no more said,” she replied, with a certain dig- 
nity, and left him. 

He saw there was nothing for him, at present, 
but to submit. He was almost sure of her 
love ; and there was almost as much elation as 
dejection in his mood as he remained, walking 
about the pinery alone, until it was quite dark, 
and, at last, the four children came racing out 
to call him in to tea and display the bags of 
chestnuts they had gathered for him. 


Or Nepenthe. 


219 


He could not but be pleased with the affec- • 
tion they showed him, hanging around him in 
ceaseless chatter until their bed-time, and then 
going off with promises of being up in time to 
see him off* in the morning, — for he was to start 
by sunrise with John Langdon. The elders of 
the family made every effort to soften the re- 
pulse he had sustained. He was reminded of 
his promise to visit the Chalet, next summer, 
and both Colonel Langdon and his eldest 
daughter engaged to correspond with him du- 
ring the winter. 

The two sisters retired on this occasion a 
little before the gentlemen. Mrs. Langdon had 
expressed her intention of coming down to 
give the travelers their breakfast in the morn- 
ing, but as she said goodnight to Godwyn — 
perhaps in order that her sister might follow 
her example without awkwardness — she offered 
him her hand ; afterwards; when Isabel’s rested 
for a moment in his, without a word being 
said on either side, he felt that this was to be 
their parting. 

Half an hour later, when taking formal leave 
of Colonel Langdon, he tried to give expression 
to his thanks for all the kindness he had re- 
ceived, but ended in a hopeless fit of stammer- 
ing, which was only silenced by Colonel Lang- 


220 


A Heroes Last Days, 


'don’s saying : “ Never mind, I think I know 

all that yon would say. God bless you, my 
son,” — words that could not but soften his hurt 
feelings. 


CIIArTER, XIL 

“ From the dark chambers of dejection freed, 

Spurning the nnprolitable yoke of care, 

Rise, , rise ; the gales of youth shall bear 

Thy genius forward like a winged steed. 

Though bold Bellerophon (so Jove decreed 
In wrath) fell headlong from the fields of air, 

Yet a high guerdon waits on minds that dare, 

If aught be in them of immortal seed. 

And reason govern that audacious flight. 

Which heavenward they direct. Then droop not thou. 

Erroneously renewing a sad vow 

In the low dell ’mid Roslyn’s fading grove, 

A cheerful life is what the muses love, 

A soaring spirit is their prime delight.” 

[Words WORTH. 

If children — as they are brought up now-a- 
days — often })la('e tlieir elders in awkward situ- 
ations by ingyropos speeches, there are many 
times, also, when their presence saves from 
awkwardness, — and the side-lights thrown on 
the tragedy of human affairs by this little 
comic sub-chorus, with its entirely independent 


Or Nepenthe. 


221 


circle of thought, with its dullness of observa- 
tion on certain points, its keenness on others, 
help much to brighten life and lighten the 
load that must be carried on, and fairly may.” 
Its presence was felt to be specially opportune 
at the early breakfast on the morning of God- 
wyn’s departure from the Chalet, which might 
otherwise have been but a mauvais quart d%eure 
for liim, as well as for John Langdon and his 
elder sister ; since it was difficult for them at 
tills time, to keep up a conversation without 
trenching on topics that had better be avoided. 
Engrossed in the discussion of the important 
matter of the choice which Godwyn had offer- 
ed them of the gifts he was to send them from 

A , the children hardly allowed room for 

the exchange of remarks on other subjects. 

Una, having chosen the dog, Belphcebe, as 
her gift, and being unaware that she was to 
come in for another — the mystery of the nature 
of which might have afforded an agreeable 
diversion for her thoughts — was less lively 
than the other children, and, indeed, quite in 
a weepy ” mood, as she declared her inten- 
tion of writing to Godwyn every day ; but she 
was not too much cast down to be ready with a 
reply when her brother told her Godwyn would 
think her a cry-baby : — 


222 


A Hei'o's Lmt Days, 


“ I don’t care ! Isabel is one, too, then ; she 
cried, last night, when she thought I was 
asleep,, and I am sure it was because Alfred 
was going.” 

No doubt, it was some consolation to Godwyn 
for not seeing her again, to hear this. Una 
could not feel that she was despised for crying, 
when he bent down tenderly to her sweet little 
face, as it was lifted for a parting kiss. 

“ There are some things I want to say which 
I thought of last night, in reference to what we 
discussed yesterday,” he said to John Langdon, 
after they were fairly off on their journey 
together. 

“ Don’t you think we had bettep not talk 
about all that any more ? ” 

“ Perhaps it is no use, just now. The chief 
thing I wished to tell you was that, for the 
present, I have made up my mind to wait. 
Yesterday I had not time enough to bring you 
all over to my way of thinking ; but you will see 
that I shall be able to persuade her — and you, 
also — into looking at things very differently, 
next summer, when I come back to make me a 
willow cabin at her gate — that is, to take pos- 
session of the Lodge, which I quite see my way 
now to buying. Now, let us talk about some- 
thing else.” 


Or Nepenthe. 


223 


After this, his spirits seemed, during the rest 
of the journey, rather above than under their 
ordinary pitch, and not at all in keeping with 
the role of rejected lover; though, now and 
then, a word or two would betray the soreness 
of heart he was trying to conceal. He talked 
even brilliantly. 

“ It reminded me of what he used to be in 
college days,” said John Langdon, afterwards. 
“ The fellows used to say he could talk in 
blank verse ; that is one of the reasons they 
used to call him Shakespeare.” 

He continued in the same vein until they 
parted from each other, the next day, at A . 

The Langdons had very pleasant letters 
from him, giving accounts of his arrival at 
the college. There, he soon found the mode of 
life thoroughly congenial to his tastes. The 
duties of his office were by no means laborious, 
and furnished him with an intellectual recrea- 
tion more wholesome than that of books, by 
bringing him into contact with the professors 
and more intelligent class of students. Tlius the 
foundations of several friendships, valuable to 
him in after life, were laid,— though this is not 
the time or the place for the reader to be in- 
troduced to the circle of which he now became 
a i)art. 


224 


A Heroes Last Days, 


The recognition accorded to his talents acted 
as a stimulus to his powers, producing a sort 
of mental exhilaration which was sometimes 
paid for by fits of despondency. Happily, 
nature had provided the outlet of poetical ex- 
pression for the relief of his sensitive tempera- 
ment. It may well be doubted if the dictum 
of Wordsworth as to poets beginning their 
youth in gladness, is true. It rather seems as 
if a cloud of sadness helped towards the de- 
velopment of a poetic nature. We are told 
that the theory upheld by a late poet is, that 
poetry is the result of the effort of an over- 
charged spirit after relief, which no other form 
of expression is found adequate for; though, 
no doubt, the composition of verse is a source 
of delight as well as a means of relief ; there is, 
at times, a joy in the spontaneous gush of song. 

Certainly Godwyn’s muse was more fruitful 
at this time tlian at any former period, and he 
would occasionally feel himself thrill with the 
thought: I, also, am a poet. For the most 
part, however, he felt doubtful of his own 
claim to be more than a mere versifier ; yet, 
having once fairly settled it in his own mind, 
that doubts on the point of the rank he might 
claim, whether among the truly original poets 
who develop new conceptions of beauty and 


Or Nepenthe. 


225 


new capacities of language — to whom many 
hold that the term poet ought to be confined — 
or to that lower order of poets who merely give 
rythmical expression to the impressions pro- 
duced on their consciousness, ought not to 
deter him from giving to the ideas that pos- 
sessed his soul, the sort of expression they 
seemed to demand, he gave free rein to his 
muse. He was always impressed with the 
truth of his ideas, whether they entered his 
brain directly from the source of creative 
energy, or mediately by reflection, or he would 
not have cared to set them forth in a worthy 
shape. 

No doubt the occupation helped him to re- 
tain a healthy tone of mind. But he was one 
in whom the affections were too strong for him 
easily to bear their remaining in an unsatisfied 
state. Sometimes he thought that that taste of 
home-life he had had at the Chalet had done 
him harm — that the kind of longing he felt for 
a return of it, showed that it had weakened 
him. 

The receipt of letters from the Langdons 
marked his white days through the winter; 
and, though Una by no means fulfilled her 
promise, they were fairly frequent. His corre- 
spondence with Colonel Langdon was very 


22G 


A Heroes Last Days, 

much taken up with the class of subjects upon 
which they had been wont to converse ; but 
Mrs. Langdon’s and Una’s letters — as may be 
supposed — were of a different character. To 
the latter, Godwyn did not hesitate to write, in 
return, long letters, sometimes containing in- 
stalments of fairy tales, the composition of 
which often afforded himself amusement. To 
Mrs. Langdon he wrote minute details of his 
surroundings and descriptions of his new ac- 
quaintances, given in a style that surprised as 
much as it entertained the family ; for he had 
given little indication at the Chalet of taste for 
such clever gossipry. “ But he is a curiously 
many-sided fellow,” was Colonel Langdon’s re- 
mark upon the unfolding of this new trait of his 
character. Annie, who, in truth, was not fond 
of letter writing, was always urged by the rest 
to reply to these epistles, which were too good 
for her to keep to herself. But sometimes his 
letters, when he would venture on the subject 
of his hopes in reference to Isabel, were not 
such as could be handed around, and this, as 
Mrs. Langdon would inform him in her re- 
plies, used to give rise to no little grumbling 
in the family conclave. It was long before she 
would make any more direct allusions in her 
answers, to such parts of Godwyn’s letters as re- 


227 


Or Nepenthe. 

ferred to Isabel ; but, at length, she became 
less guarded, and it was evident she had be- 
come a strong all}^ of his. 

An extract from one of her letters, which 
were without pretensions to cleverness, yet, in 
a style tliat, to an affectionate friend, was full 
of interest, may serve to give an idea of the 
flow of life at the Chalet during the winter ; 

“ We are a little uneasy about Papa’s health lately ; he 
seems not quite as strong as he was last summer; but 
one can hardly tell — he never complains. His spirits 
are really brighter, and sometimes I think it is only a 
fancy of ours that his health is not as good as usual. 
You should have heard him last night, playing ‘ What 
is my Thought like,’ and ‘Twenty Questions,’ with the 
children— -as merry as they were- He plays chess 
against all four of them together, letting them agree on 
a move. Of course, they are no match for him. Isabel 
is scarcely that, in spite of the advantage she has over 
him of being able to see the board. 

I think she and Papa find more to say to each other 
than they used to. Sometimef it is as hard to get them 
to leave off talking at a reasonable hour, at night, as it 
used to be to manoeuvre you and him apart. I heard 
Papa say to Johnny, the other day, that she seemed to 
have caught the trick of arguing from a certain person 
who, he hoped, might never live to repent having taught 
her the art— of course, this was only a joke, and I ought 
not to have told you.” 

Joke or not, it gave untold pleasure to God- 
wyn to find them evidently considering Ids 


228 


A Heroes Last Days, 

marriage with Isabel quite a possibility of the 
future. She was, of course, never alluded to in 
her father’s letters, since she always acted as his 
amanuensis — a fact sufficient to render them 
doubly interesting to her lover. 

A part of one of Colonel Langdon’s letters, 
peculiarly treasured afterwards by Godwyn, 
ran thus : 

“ The more I reflect upon that part of your tlieory in 
regard to the constitution of bodies politic, which re- 
lates to the existence in them, corresponding to the fac- 
ulty of conscience in individuals, of a continuous order 
of personages divinely endowed with special capabili- 
ties for the moral guidance of the whole people, the 
more inclined do I feel to assent to it. 

“In the account in the book of Judges, of the first di- 
vinely appointed government of the Israelites, an almost 
autocratic power was lodged in the hands of just such a 
recognized class ; and it would seem as if the refusal of 
the nation to be guided by the legitimate successors of 
that order — that is, by its prophets, not its kings, who 
rather represent the will, or deciding power, in the per- 
sonality of that nation — was the key to the subsequent 
history of the Jewish race. 

“ Lately, during hours of wakefulness at nights, accom- 
panied by a rather abnormal activity of the brain, to 
which I have become subject— perhaps a result of my 
infirmity, which makes the nights seem less unnatural 
and trying to me than the day — such things have seem- 
ed to become very clear to me. In reflecting upon the 
history of South Carolina, more particularly, I now seem 
able to identify many whom I conceive to have belong- 


Or Nepenthe. 


229 


ed in their day, to tliis responsible class. A descend- 
ant of some of these individuals, may be that some por- 
tion of the spirit that animated those forefathers of 
yours has rested upon you — if so, I confess I fear that 
your life will be rather a sad one. 

“ You have ‘ fallen ui)on evil days,’ and can hardly 
fail to have to endure much of misapprehension, mis- 
representation and of seeming failure to effect anything 
by your protests against the spirit of the times in which 
your lot has been cast. I, who have tasted somewhat 
of the bitterness of that woe denounced upon ‘ them 
that are discouraged,’ ‘ have prayed for thee that 
thy faith fail not,’ in the ordeal. You know not what 
may depend — if there is any truth in your own theory 
— upon the victory of your individual faith, what final 
advantages may accrue, even to your whole State, by 
your holding firmly to your principles. God grant to 
you, and to such as you, still deeper spiritual insight 
into his ways with men and nations !” 

N 


CHAPTER XIIL 

“ Be not amazed at life. ’Tis still 
The mode of God, with His elect, 

Their hopes exactly to fulfill 

In ways and times they least expect.” 

[Coventry Patmore. 


Godwyn kept up a brisk correspondence with 
the inmates of the Chalet during the whole 
winter after his visit to the Sechoolah Valley ; 
but in the spring there was a sudden cessation 


230 


A Heroes Last Days, 


of answers to his letters. This had lasted six 
weeks, and was troubling him very much, when 
there at last arrived a letter, directed by the 
hand of John Langdon, who was not one of his 
usual correspondents. His feeling of alarm at 
the circumstance was justified by the contents 
of the letter — the utterly unexpected announce- 
ment of the death of Colonel Langdon. 

The letter was brief. Johnny said the event 
had taken place three weeks before the date 
of his writing. The attack that preceded 
it had seemed like paralysis. Colonel Lang- 
don had rallied occasionally, during the we^k 
his illness had lasted, but had been mostl}^ 
in a state of stupor. They had hoped he 
suffered very little, as he never showed signs of 
being in pain. Several times, when conscious, 
he had alluded to Godwyn — what he had said, 
Johnny did not mention, only making the 
comment, “he had come to be very fond of 
you.” Annie had said, at first, that she would 
write “ all about it ” to Godwyn ; and Johnny 
had imagined that she had done so, or he 
would, he said, have written before ; but it 
seemed that she had deferred tlie painful task 
from day to day. She now sent a message that 
he must excuse the neglect, — ^she had found it 
very liard to write letters. The letter closed 


231 


Or Nepenthe. 

with a hope that Goclwyn would still pay them 
his promised visit in thewacation of the college. 

Godwyn hastily resolved to go immediately 
to the Chalet. He managed in a few hours to 
complete an arrangement for putting a substi- 
tute in his place during his absence. It only 
occurred to him after he had actually set off 
on the journey, to wonder if the Langdons 
might not think his appearance at such a time 
uncalled for, though they might be too well- 
bred to show it. Could he expect them to un- 
derstand the impulse that made him feel one 
with them in this family sorrow? Would they 
consider his deep attachment to them all as an 
excuse for what might seem like uncalled-for 
forwardness in him ? His action might seem 
prompted by an unseemly haste to press his 
suit with Isabel. He knew in his soul ’ that, 
under the bewilderment of the sudden shock 
of this new's, he had not thought of anything 
resulting to himself; an irresistible impulse 
had drawn him to the valley, to help them 
under this crushing sorrow, and continued to 
draw him, in spite of the doubts of the wisdom 
of his action, which perplexed him during the 
remainder of the journey. 

The third morning after the receipt of John 
Langdon’s letter, found him setting off on horse- 


232 


A Heroes Last Days, 


back from A- for the last seventeen miles 

of his journey. 

With his mind full of grief, anxiety and im- 
patience, he sometimes urged his steed forward 
unreasonably, and again relaxed his reins, in 
the most careless manner, while he rehearsed 
in imagination the scenes towards which he 
was hastening. Distracted as his thoughts were, 
he could not long be unconscious of the fresh 
vivid life of the young season or insensible to 
the signs of awakening nature that surrounded 
him. 

He felt as if there might be a mysterious cor- 
respondence between this point in his own life 
and the scene through which he was passing. 
His past existence had been hard, and bare 
enough, in some respects, to justify its compar- 
ison to a wintry season. Did he now, at last, 
stand upon the verge of a long-deferred spring- 
time? Was life suddenly about to flush fortli 
for him into blossom and beauty ? 

By times, a glimpse of distant mountains 
would bring solemn thoughts of infinity and 
eternity. A deep religious feeling possessed his 
soul. He would blame liimself for forgetting, 
in romantic dreams, the spiritual side of human 
life and human love. If so be that the highest 
form of happiness which earthly relationships 


Or Nepenthe. 233 

can bestow, was about to fall to his lot, he re- 
solved that the riches of that possession must 
not be wasted in mere selfish delights, they 
must flow abroad to brighten other lives. The 
young green buds on the trees made his 
thoughts revert to the analogy he believed to 
exist between the vital forces of the principles of 
truth, and the energies of physical forms of life 
which revive in the spring-time. The aspira- 
tions of one generation, thought he, revive in 
another ; the seeds of the hope of nations pass 
down the ages, embodied in the lives of indi- 
viduals. 

He remembered his argument with Colonel 
Langdon. If it were true, indeed, that the chief 
end of national events was the development of 
individual character, it could not, he felt, be 
considered an unworthy consummation, that 
such a character as his had been evolved by 
the working of late events. Was it solely to 
test that character that such an accumulation of 
troubles could have been heaped upon the close 
of a virtuous life ? But if it were true that “ no 
man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to 
himself,” it could not be that the spiritual re- 
sult of the noble patience the blind hero had 
maintained to the last, could be altogether lost. 
There came over Godwyn a sense of exultation 


234 


A Heroes Last Days, 

in tlie coinpletcness of the victory of the spirit 
whicli luid sustained his old friend through all, 
and therewitli a humbling recognition of the 
comparative worthlessness of a successful love? 
which had seemed to him, a little before, the 
highest thing to be attained in life. 

He remembered his own little allegory, in 
which the cup of the Nepenthe of earthly love 
had been held to the lips of the hero. Yes, 
there is, thought he, a diviner Nepenthe, — 
“ herein is the patience and faith of the saints.” 
The outcome of these reflections was the follow- 
ing little rhapsody : 


THE CROWN OF ]JFE. 

“ Art lluni the frown of life, O Love, 

Art thou the crown of life?” 

Who loves not seems to sluiul ai)art, — 
Why should he care to live and move? 
The rich possession of the heart. 

The saxTed love ’twixt man and wife, 
. The highest joy of human life, 

Say, — is not this the crown? 

Nay ; ’tis but so 
In seeming show. 

Who loves not, true, he stands apart, 
Love is the opening of the heart. 

The tlepthsof joy and grief to prove, 

’Tis Death that sets the seal to Love, 


Or Nepenthe. • 235 

The partin'^ of tlie breatli, 

It is the hiyinj^ down 
Of till the restless i)ain. 

(ailed loving, the eternal calm to gain. 

Thon art the crown of life, 0 Death ! 

O Death, thou art life’s crown ! 

No, no ! Death ends the strife 

Of this our mortal life; 

Yet neither ]>ove nor Death I call 

The (Town of all. 

These are the cr nvned lives — whether rich 
Or pejor in love — the end of which 
Is freedom, light and virtue gained. 

The crown of life is Faith attained. 

It was a little before noon when Godwyn 
reached the entrance of the Sechoolah Valley. 

Just at the point in the road where, at his 
lirst arrival, John Langdon had pointed out 
the little chapel, he suddcjily encountered his 
dog, Belphoebe, who, instantly recognizing him, 
indulged in extravagant demonstrations of joy 
at the meeting. 

It occurred to him that one of the family 
from the Chalet might be at the chapel ; for it 
seemed unlikely that Bol])hoebe had strayed 
there alone. Recollecting also that there was 
a ])ridle-jjath from the chapel, much shortening 
the way to the Chalet, he turned in from the 
road to investigate the little grave-yard before 
going further. 


236 A Herd's Last Days, 

Godwyn well remembered the only occasion 
on which he had previously entered this en- 
closure, one afternoon, in company with the 
children, who had been the constant attendants 
of his rambles in the valley. They had pro- 
posed showing him “ our Confederate graves” — 
so designating those of two soldiers, one of 
whom had been a poor man belonging to the 
valley, who had come home, during the war, to 
die of wounds received in Virginia, and had 
had a stone put up to his memory by some of 
the gentlemen who had resided there. The 
other had been a Texan, a paroled prisoner, 
who had died while making his way on foot to 
his far-off home, just after the war closed. 

“ So,” little Una had told him, “ as all our 
money then was not worth anything, and we 
could not buy a grave-stone, Isabel got Johnny > 
to make a wooden cross for his grave, and 
planted some violets and a white rose there, 
herself.” He had plucked one of the late roses 
that had lingered then on that bush, quoting 
to himself as he did so Timrod’s lines : 4 

“ Stoop, angels, hither from the skies I ^ 

There is no holier spot of ground i 

Than where defeated Valour lies £ 

By mourning Beauty crowned.” I 


237 


Or Nepenthe. 

All this Godwyn recalled as he fastened his 
horse outside of the enclosure, and followed the 
dog, whose manifest disposition to precede him 
confirmed his suspicions that some one was 
within, — never had IsabeFs image presented 
itself to him in a more tender and beautiful 
light. 

A black- robed figure started up from a new- 
made grave at his approach. Yes ! it was Isa- 
bel, herself ; but she was fearfully pale, and her 
eyes had dark rings around them She looked 
! at him as if she was uncertain if she was not in 
a dream. 

“ I knew, — that is I thought, you would 
come,” she said. Her eyes were wistfully ap- 
pealing, like a child’s. The next moment she 
was in a rain of tears in his arms. 

The terms upon which they were to stand 
were taken for- granted. He ventured upon 
the most endearing expressions in his attempts 
I to soothe , and while there was no response, 
there was entire recognition of his right to do 
so. Very little ‘more than such things passed 
between them on this occasion. 

Paroxysms of tears recurred upon every at- 
tempt Isabel made to talk. She seemed at last 
exhausted with weeping. Godwyn became 
alarmed and suggested her going home. He 


238 


A Hero's Last Bays, 


proposed lifting her upon his horse and leading 
it by the bridle, and it was in this style they at 
last reached the Chalet together. 

Godwyn’s reception by the rest of the family 
was all that he could have wished. The truth 
was, Mrs. Langdon and John had very much 
wished that he might come, though not liking 
to suggest it, hardly supposing it possible, but 
thinking that his presence might move Isabel 
out of a phase of grief, which had made them 
very uneasy upon her account. They had been 
anxious about her, even before the date of John- 
ny’s letter to Godwyn. It had seemed unnatural 
that, while talking freely of her father, and that 
in a most affecting strain, she had not, up to 
that time, been seen to shed one tear over his 
death. 

The day after his writing to Godwyn. her 
brother had mentioned the fact of his having 
done so before her, rather as an experiment, to 
see the effect of the mention of his name, for 
both he and Annie thought that anything 
which might break this unnatural calmness 
would be good for her. She seemed unaffected 
at the time, but, a little after, she was found 
weeping violently. In telling Godwyn of this, 
long after, she said it was not the thought of 
his love for herself, that had overpowered her. 


Or Nepenthe. 


239 


but of the peculiar affection with which her 
father had regarded him. This recollection 
had first softened her heart out of a strange 
stony indifference to everything. In the reac- 
tion, she became nervously susceptible; for 
days there hardly seemed any cessation to her 
tears, except during sleep. She seemed to wish 
nothing but to be let alone, and, finding it 
quieted her more than anything else, they had 
yielded to her desire, and the day of Godwyn’s 
arrival, she had thus found her way, alone, to 
the church-yard. 

“ When I saw you, I knew that you had been 
the one thing I wanted,.” she confessed, long 
after ; “ but before that, I did not know it. I 
seemed to care for nothing.” 

Each day of the ten Godwyn, at this time, 
passed at the Chalet, brought her to a more 
natural tone. An exacting lover might have 
been dissatisfied at her continued absorption in 
her grief ; but he was contented to feel that his 
presence was a comfort to her, and to look for- 
ward to the time when her affection to one who 
would stand in even a dearer relation might 
come to equal her devotion to her father. Her 
life had been so bound up in his that in his 
deatli she too seemed to undergo a sort of 
death, and had to be re-awakened, as it were, 


240 


A Herd’s Last Days, 


to life through the development of that other 
love which had fortunately found entrance into 
her heart before this grief had come upon her. 

On only one occasion, did Godwyn press upon 
her the question of plans for the future. 

It shall be as you like, — as Papa wished,” 
she said, and broke down, weeping, without 
further explanation. 

On repeating this to her sister, Godwyn was 
deeply touched at learning that the expression 
of a hope that Isabel would yet become his 
wife, had been one of those last conscious utter- 
ances of Colonel Langdon, to which his son had 
referred in his letter. 

In the confidences of the conversation which 
ensued, Godwyn heard that, after his leaving 
them in the autumn, Isabel’s continued de- 
pression had made it evident to her father . 
that she had made a sacrifice of feeling in 
rejecting her lover. Colonel Langdon had, 
without her ever becoming aware of it, insisted 
on an explanation from her brother and S 
sister. He had appeared much affected on be- i 
coming aware of the truth, blaming them for § 
keeping him in ignorance at the time; but, on ^ 
the whole, the matter had seemed to disturb 
him less than they had feared it would. To 
Isabel he had never alluded to the subject, and 


Or Nepenthe. 


241 


she was never told of what he had discovered ; 
for Godwyn knew that it would distress her, and 
did not inform lier, even when he had an open- 
ing, through her telling him of some peculiar 
expressions of blessing and affectionateness her 
father had used to her, not long before his death, 
which seemed to bear reference to her conduct 
in refusing Godwyn, when she added : One 
would have thought he knew that I had cared 
for you.’’ 

Bosidas an increase of tenderness, her father 
j had bestowed on her, during the whole of that 
winter, more of his real confidence than he had 
ever done before, treating her more as an equal. 
She had soon recovered from her loss of spirits 
after Godwyn’s departure, and, during the last 
' months of Colonel Langdon’s life, there had 
j been a much truer companionship between the 
two than either had dreamed of before. In 
Isabel’s memory ever after, there seemed a halo 
of uneartldiness around the happiness of those 
days, when she had been dwelling with him, 
as it were, apart, upon spiritual heights to 
which she could never have attained alone, 
living, it seemed, in the reflection of the bright- 
ness wliich was shed over his victorious spirit 
just before it entered upon its final rest. 

They could recall many things that had 


242 


A Hero's Last Days, 


taken place before his attack, which — not un- 
derstood in that way at the time — now were 
seen to show that he had looked forward with 
great longing to the death which he had felt 
was not far off. Yet there was one sad word 
of his for them to remember : During his ill- 
ness, in an interval of consciousness, he re- 
peated Sarsfield’s saying : “ Oh that this blood 
were only shed for Ireland ! ” and then Lord 
Houghton’s line : “Alas ! we cannot even die 
for that we love the best ! ” 

“Yet it may be,” he had added, faintly and 
brokenly, “ God will accept a life offered for 
my country in will, as if it had been a life 
offered in deed. But, however • that may be, I 
am ready — aye, ready — to resign mine now, 
at the time of His appointment.” And so 
death had found him. 

The mode in which. Isabel’s grief had ex- 
pressed itself might have been the natural 
reaction upon her having been, for months, 
lifted out of ordinary reaches of feeling in her 
intense sympathy with his exalted .state. Had 
Godwyn, with all his claims, which love and 
duty to her father’s last wishes now taught her 
to recognize, not reappeared at this juncture, 
she might have wasted away from the earth, 
love for her father having thus been the chief 


(Jr Nepenthe. 


248 


passion of her life ; but it was not so ordered. 
It was to be bers to taste the fullness — perhaps 
to prove the emptiness — of the highest eaidhly 
joys. Quickl}^ she ])roved herself an apt 
scholar in tlie school of love ; so that he who 
began b}" being her teacher, ended by having 
to learn many lessons from her in the delicate, 
higlier branches of the art of loving. 

At the close of the following summer, he 
took her away from the Chalet to beautify and 
complete his life, and to enjoy with him, for a 
few too short years, a strange happiness, such 
as, but for the hope that it is but the earnest of 
what death shall renew, can only be the fore- 
runner of a piteous desolation. 


Silence assented when I answered thee, 

Dear voice, now stilled for earth, that playful said : 
“ The funeral baked meats coldly furnished 
The marriage tables forth.’’ This could not be 
Well changed ; for life, I thought, was never free 
From hard conditions ; new loves must be fed 
At the old’s expense, — though we rob not the dead 
Learning to love the living perfectly. 

Beloved voice ! If I could hear thee still, 

Would’st thou not witness that this is not so 
In that high realm where all true loves ascend. 
Whose harmonies thou helpest now to lill ? 

There to perfection all our loves shall grow. 

Nor ever clash, nor fail to find their end. 


244 A Hero's Last Dai/s, or Nepenthe. 


There to perfection all our loves shall grow, — 

Not only those that to a single soul 
Link us,' but to our race as to a whole, 

The higher, nobler loves that we may know 
Even in this poor, bounded life below ! 

Thou who dost •ead us towards an unknown goal, 
Our wills to Thine, oh ! teach us to control 
And join all loves to that to Thee we owe ! 

Thou dost employ thine own in various stations 
To stamp Thy purpose on this world of ours. 

Grant them to type the life of Christ — though faintly — 
And blend Thy Spirit with the lives of nations. 

Till we begin to see the city saintly 
Descending, bride-like, with her hundred towers ! 


END. 


HERO’S LAST DAYS, 



NEPENTHE. 


THE Author of ‘‘A Sequence of Songs.” 


“ Clarior e tenebris.’’ 


Copy Right Secured according to Laav. 


PUBLISHED BY 

W. J. DUFFIE, CoLUAiBiA, So. Ca. 
1883 . 






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